For a man who manages $88 billion in assets for over 800 entities, with a diversified portfolio that ranges from Petrobras to Exxon, Nvidia, Snowflake, Bharti, ITC and Lotte, old-school bets in dividend or cash-generating businesses have been a predominant investing mantra for Rajiv Jain, chairman of GQG Partners. Last week’s $1.87 billion bet on Gautam Adani’s empire is arguably his most daring till date. In a frank, no holds barred, hour long interview with Arijit Barman, the founder of the Fort Lauderdale-based GQG, opened up on his thesis, Adani’s political affiliations, crisis management strategy and more. Edited excerpts:
Why did you buy the stakes from the Adani family trust and not from others?
That's frankly not our decision. That was their decision. So we didn't pick and choose. But from a structuring perspective, we thought it's better to sort of buy directly from the promoter family. In other words, a secondary offering rather than primary offering. And also as a whole for logistical reasons also, such as the timing etc., secondary is faster and more efficient.
There were murmurs that other institutional investors like LIC were ready to sell too…
Once you are shopping around, the deal is off, in my opinion, because the word will leak, right? So speed matters in these things. And the way the stock was moving, we kind of knew that this won't last forever. The faster a stock declines, the sooner the decline would end. So you can't say we’re gonna look at it and...
This story is the second in an ongoing series on the Cost of Fraud, as Open the Books tallies the hidden fees on American tax returns. Click here to read the first story on fraudulent autism billi...