Gautam Adani to settle with SEC

Gautam Adani is on the cusp of ending a series of legal threats in the US, paving the way for Asia’s richest man to ramp up investment and capital raising after months battling allegations, including fraud and bribery.

Adani and his nephew Sagar agreed to pay a total of $18 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission allegations they made false and misleading representations about Adani Green Energy, according to a proposed agreement filed in federal court Thursday.

Gautam Adani. Image: Indranil Aditya/Bloomberg

The SEC alleged in a November 2024 lawsuit that Adani spearheaded an effort to pay or promise hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to Indian officials to win contracts Adani Green needed to develop India’s largest solar power plant project. The Justice Department is also moving to drop fraud charges against Gautam Adani in a parallel criminal case, Bloomberg News reported earlier.

Most dollar bonds of the Adani Group rose. An Adani Green Energy note due in 2042 jumped as much as 1 cent, the most since early April, to 98.3. A security from Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone due in 2041 gained 0.8 cent.

Shares of the flagship Adani Enterprises Ltd. rose as much as 3.3% during Mumbai trading on Friday before erasing some of those gains. The stock has climbed more than 22% this year, heading for its first annual advance since 2022. Adani Green Energy also jumped as much as 4.1%.

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A settlement would mark a milestone for the Adani Group, one of India’s most powerful companies whose interests include energy, airports and a data center business that’s part of a $100 billion digital infrastructure push. It would help the conglomerate return to international capital markets and resume its aggressive expansion strategy, following allegations of market manipulation by short-seller Hindenburg Research in 2023 that Adani has also denied.

“This is extremely positive for the group’s investor perception,” said Abhay Agarwal, chief investment officer at Piper Serica Advisors. It could put an end to the hit that the conglomerate took after the Hindenberg allegations, he said.

The SEC had said that Adani and his nephew falsely touted the company’s compliance with antibribery principles and laws in connection with a $750 million bond offering. Adani Green raised at least $175 million from investors in the US, the SEC said at the time.

Gautam Adani, Asia’s richest person, chairs the Adani Group conglomerate and Sagar Adani is executive director at Adani Green Energy. Neither the conglomerate nor its corporate units was sued by the SEC. The company denied the US allegations at the time.

Adani would pay $6 million and Sagar would pay $12 million to end the SEC’s lawsuit, under the proposed agreement, which still needs a judge’s approval.

Unlock US investments

The resolutions may also unlock Adani investment in the US. Shortly after Donald Trump won the 2024 election, Gautam Adani congratulated the president and pledged to invest $10 billion in US energy and infrastructure projects.

The group’s dollar bonds are likely to advance further ahead, and the conglomerate, which already has strong alternative funding sources, could resume fundraising in the dollar bond market, according to Sharon Chen, Bloomberg Intelligence credit analyst.

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Sagar Adani. Image: Sumit Dayal/Bloomberg

Bloomberg News reported in February 2025 that since the cases were filed, Adani built a political influence operation in the US that included lawyers for white-shoe law firms and lobbyists.

While the Justice Department prosecution had been stalled with the Adanis not in the US, the SEC case had started to advance in court.

In January, Robert Giuffra Jr., co-chair of law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, told a federal judge that he reached an agreement to accept the lawsuit on Gautam Adani’s behalf. Court filings also showed that US-based lawyers agreed to accept formal notification of the lawsuit on Sagar Adani.

Gautam Adani’s lawyers then argued that the SEC’s fraud case should be dismissed, saying that regulators lacked necessary jurisdiction over the two men and that the alleged misstatements underpinning the case weren’t actionable.

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