Tag: Grant Thornton

Deal activity in May witnesses significant slowdown, reports Grant Thornton

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Grant Thornton has released a comprehensive report highlighting the deal activity trends observed during May month. The report reveals a notable decline in deal activity, prompting experts to analyse the reasons behind this slowdown.

Raja Lahiri, Partner at Grant Thornton Bharat, recently shared his insights on the matter during an interview with CNBC-TV18.

According to Grant Thornton’s report, May month experienced a significant decline in deal activity. Deal values witnessed an astonishing decline of over 80 percent compared to previous months, indicating a substantial drop in investor confidence.

Additionally, deal volumes also plummeted, with a decline of more than 45 percent during the same period. These statistics highlight a worrisome trend in the investment landscape.

“It is an 80 percent plus kind of decline in May. First five months it is very similar, 80 percent plus a decline in terms of deal value, 45 percent plus a decline in terms of deal volumes, that is the statistics overall,” he said.

Raja Lahiri identified one of the primary reasons for the slowdown in deal activity as the deceleration in the venture capital (VC) space. According to him, venture capitalists have become more cautious, leading to a significant reduction in investments. This slowdown in the VC sector has likely contributed to the overall decline in deal volumes.

Another factor contributing to the decline in deal activity is the sense of caution prevailing within the private equity (PE) domain. While there have been some noteworthy large buyout deals during May, the overall sentiment remains guarded. Investors appear hesitant to write large checks. This cautious approach toward investment decisions has had an impact on the overall deal activity.

For more details, watch the accompanying video

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Adani refutes reports of hiring Grant Thornton for independent audit, calls it ‘market rumor’

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Adani Group responded to recent media reports that it has hired accountancy firm Grant Thornton for an independent audit of some of its companies, stating that the news is a ‘market rumor’.

Media reports earlier this week had claimed that the embattled Adani Group had appointed the accountancy firm in a bid to come clean of the damning allegations levelled by the US short-seller Hindenburg Research and to assure investors and regulators.

“We would like to clarify that the said news item appears to be a market rumour and hence it would be inappropriate on our part to comment on it,” the company said in an exchange filing.

Also read: Adani-Hindenburg Row: Government files affidavit in sealed envelope only for Supreme Court judges

The statement also emphasised that the company would continue to comply with its obligations under SEBI (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2015, and its agreements with the stock exchanges.

Adani Group companies have been on a downward spiral after a report from short-seller Hindenburg Research accused the conglomerate of fraud.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Most CIOs feel need for elevating tech funds to drive businesses: Grant Thornton Survey

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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According to a survey report by Grant Thornton Bharat and Dynamic CIO, the majority of chief information officers (75 percent) believe there is a need to increase the tech budget and driving businesses toward innovation and digital platforms such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and cloud.

The poll found that 31 percent of organisations are at the strategic stage of their digital transformation journey (roadmap for digital tech and investment in key technologies is ready), followed by 30 percent at the convergent level (targeted team has been set to guide the business on the strategic path towards transformation).

The two most important drivers of digital technology adoption are lower costs and more efficiency, as well as establishing a competitive advantage and allowing frontline operations, each making up 27 percent.

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According to the paper, ‘Unlocking Innovation: Breaking Through Inertia,’ technology presents strong business opportunities while also contributing to the development in skill gaps. According to the poll, 32 percent of respondents identified a key impediment to the digital transformation process as a shortage of trained tech talent.

“To effectively deal with this problem, 70 percent of organisations are running periodic assessments to upskill talent to become future-ready. More than 50 percent of organisations were awarding various non-monetary benefits to their employees for bringing in new ideas, compared to 37 percent of organisations that were awarding monetary incentives,” it added.

Grant Thornton Bharat’s clients and markets leader (advisory services), Jaspreet Singh, stated, “The commitment of senior management tops the list as the main lever for change in digital projects. According to the survey, 80 per cent of CIOs and tech leaders say they are driving their companies’ innovation efforts for sustainability and growth as they are responsible for high-powered initiatives.” 

“With nearly three-quarters of organisations expecting to have an excellent innovative capability in the next two years, CIOs should develop a methodical approach to innovation that can lead to differentiated growth,” she added.

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The study result, which was released at DynamicCIO’s flagship three-city summit and awards, Enterprise Innovation Summit (EIS) 2022, also indicated that 82 percent of respondent organisations want to build consistent methods for reinforcing change in digital transformation initiatives.

The Grant Thornton Bharat’s Innovation Study 2022 surveyed “numerous tech, innovation, and business leaders” to understand their approaches to changing digital space and innovation and developed clear recommendations for taking innovation, growth, and sustainability from ideation to industrialisation.

“With change happening at an accelerated pace in the digital era, the current market mantra is to digitise or die,” said Raman Shenoy, partner (dGTL) at Grant Thornton dGTL. “Companies are rushing to keep up to date in adopting new technologies to offer a competitive edge to their operations.”

According to the poll, 70 percent of change management efforts fail due to employee resistance and a lack of management support. It suggests that traditional change management strategies may not be the greatest match for the digital era.

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

London Eye: Indian investment in UK matches Punjab

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Two sets of figures, that perhaps ought to be wildly apart, now stand identical. The GDP of Punjab stands at Rs 5.4 lakh crore. That, according to the new annual report by the company Grant Thornton that measures investments between India and Britain, is now the same as the turnover of less than a thousand Indian companies in Britain, at 54 billion pounds.

Seen one way, this marks a welcome global expansion of Indian companies into world-class competitive production and performance abroad. Seen another, it’s a heavy flight of Indian capital abroad that could have been invested into growth and jobs back home.

Seen from British eyes, this attraction of wealth into Britain is something clearly to be embraced. British Minister for Investment Lord Gerry Grimstone predicted happily for Britain that this level of investment is expected to double by the end of the decade. Not many are counting on Punjab’s GDP to double over this period. This means that all of Punjab cannot at present generate as much wealth as a few hundred Indian companies in Britain.

By the end of the decade more of these may generate twice as much unless Punjab could grow dramatically. Or any other state in India; Punjab at present offers a tempting parallel because it offers figures equal to the turnover of Indian companies in the UK. But clearly, this level of growth is not matched anywhere within India.

With an India-UK free trade deal due to be signed by Diwali this year, the “biggest deal is yet to come,” said Grimstone at the launch.

Indian investment into Britain is rising fast. “Despite Brexit, the investment footprint of Indian companies into the UK has increased,” Anuj Chande, head of the South Asia Group at Grant Thornton tells CNBC-TV18. “From 850 Indian companies that we had last year we now have 900 companies with a combined turnover of 54.4 billion pounds, compared to 50.3 billion pounds last year.”

These companies now employ more than 140,000 people, which is an increase of nearly 20 percent over last year’s, says the company’s annual ‘tracker’ report for 2022, produced in collaboration with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). “It’s been a dramatic increase in the investment footprint in all sorts of areas,” says Chande.

Indian View

Indian officials in Britain do not see this as a flight of capital. High Commissioner Gaitri Issar Kumar welcomed the growing investment. New investment worth a billion pounds had been announced during Prime Minister Boris Johnson”s visit to India last month. “The inside information is that most of that is from India into the UK, so congratulations for that,” Kumar said at the launch of the report.

Grant Thornton says Indian companies have long been setting footprints abroad, even if the footprints have not been as large as now, or striding outwards faster. “Indian companies have historically been global in nature,” Chandru Iyer, head of South Asia business development at Grant Thornton tells CNBC-TV18. “A lot of Indian businesses have done wonderfully well in their home market, but there comes a time when they will look at greener pastures, and where they will get their next growth story.”

This is not about the flight of capital, says Iyer, “it’s about capital investment into this country to create jobs”. But this does mean more growth and more jobs for Britain where these companies undoubtedly see greener pastures.

And Indian companies are seeing greener pastures out of traditional destinations such as London; more and more Indian companies are now setting up in the British Midlands and further north. Indian companies are diversifying away also from the traditional dominance in IT.

For many of these companies, the outward expansion into Britain has come to add to, and not instead of, growth of business back home. “Their Indian story is equally good,” says Iyer. The expansion into Britain is following business logic, he says.

Investment the other way from Britain into India is equally significant, Iyer says. Last year the company found that British companies had created about 400,000 jobs in India, he says, and the revenue they have generated is significant. The next few years, he says, will be a “watershed moment” for an increase in investments in both directions.

— London Eye is a weekly column by CNBC-TV18’s Sanjay Suri, which gives a peek at business-as-unusual from London and around.

Read his other columns here

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3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Deals could dry up in Q2CY21, says Grant Thornton’s Prashant Mehra

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Grant Thornton has come out with a report assessing and analysing the way the deal street has performed in the first quarter of the calendar year 2021. This remains the top theme. Other top themes are the COVID-related themes like IT, start-up, eCommerce space seeing the maximum amount of traction and the second is the green energy segment which is also in the aftermath of the COVID situation.

Private Equity (PE) deals have also dried up in the early part of the year. Prashant Mehra, Partner at Grant Thornton Bharat, shared his outlook on deal street and discussed how things are developing at the moment.

“As we are fearing another lockdown, the reliance on anything which can be done virtually will be even more. Not just private equity money coming in but even the theme that we saw in the last month, which is non-tech companies looking at tech platforms will be the theme going forward for the next quarter as well. However, on an overall basis, I do envisage that there will be a certain dry-up of deals and opportunities coming back. So we could possibly be looking at a very subdued Q2 of CY2021,” he said.

For more, watch the video.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

DHFL auditor Grant Thornton finds another fraud of Rs 1,424 crore

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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DHFL on Friday said its administrator has filed additional affidavits in the NCLT Mumbai in connection with fraud amounting to over Rs 1,424 crore.

The company, which is undergoing a corporate debt resolution process in the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), is being run by an administrator in the aftermath of IL&FS crisis in 2018 and unearthing of massive fraud in the company.

The administrator of the company has appointed Grant Thornton (GT or transaction auditor) to conduct investigation into the affairs of the company.

The administrator of the company received an initial report from the transaction auditor, indicating that there are certain transactions which are undervalued, fraudulent and preferential in nature, DHFL said in a regulatory filing.

“Basis the investigation and observations of the transaction auditor, the administrator has filed two additional affidavits (to the two already filed applications) before the Mumbai bench of the NCLT on March 4, 2021, in respect of disbursements made to certain entities as inter corporate deposits (ICDs), against Kapil Wadhawan, Dheeraj Wadhawan, Township Developers India Ltd. and entities to whom ICDs were given,” DHFL said.

As per the findings of GT, the estimated amount involved in the fraud places monetary impact of the concerned transactions at approximately Rs 1,424.32 crore (which includes Rs 29.94 crore towards notional loss of interest on account of charging lower rate of interest), said the company.

The concerned transactions occurred during 2017-18 and 2018-19. The company keeps on informing about such findings from time to time. Various such frauds have been unearthed by GT including the recent one in the last month involving fraud of over Rs 6,180 crore.

As of July 2019, the beleaguered home financier owed Rs 83,873 crore to banks, National Housing Board, mutual funds and bondholders/retail bondholders.

Of the total, the secured debt stands at Rs 74,054 crore and Rs 9,818 crore in unsecured debt. Most banks have declared DHFL accounts as non-performing assets.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

DHFL case: Auditor Grant Thornton unearths another fraudulent transaction of Rs 6,182 cr

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Dewan Housing Finance Corporation (DHFL) on Monday said its transaction auditor, Grant Thornton, has reported another fraudulent transaction of Rs 6,182 crore in the company. The administrator of the company received an initial report from the professional agency appointed as the transaction auditor indicating that there are certain transactions which are ”undervalued, fraudulent and preferential in nature”, DHFL said in a regulatory filing.

”As per the transaction auditor report shared with the administrator, the monetary impact of the above transactions covered under the application amounts to Rs 5,381.90 crore towards the outstanding principal, Rs 589.36 crore towards accrued interest and Rs 210.85 crore towards notional loss of interest on account of charging lower rate of interest,” said the filing about the estimated impact on the company. Further, the estimated amount involved in this fraud transaction places the monetary impact at around Rs 6,182.11 crore (which includes Rs 210.85 crore as notional loss of interest), said the company.

According to the findings of Grant Thornton (GT), these transactions happened over a period of time. The management of DHFL is currently being run under an administrator appointed under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code after frauds were detected in the company.

The administrator later on appointed GT as the transaction auditor to conduct investigation of the affairs of the company. Basis the investigation and observations of the Transaction Auditor, the Administrator has filed an application before the Mumbai bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) on February 20, 2021 in respect of disbursement made to certain entities as other large project loans, against Kapil Wadhawan, Dheeraj Wadhawan, Creatoz Builders Pvt Ltd, Ikshudip Fincap Pvt Ltd, Rite Developers Pvt Ltd and certain other entities.

DHFL said the application to NCLT has been filed against 33 respondents, including Kapil Wadhawan, Dheeraj Wadhawan, Creatoz Builders, Ikshudip Fincap, Rite Developers and certain other entities. It is to be noted that further filings may be undertaken, in due course, the company said.

The stock of DHFL was trading at Rs 18.05 apiece on BSE, down 4.75 percent from its previous close.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Initial audit reveals over Rs 17,000 crore siphoned off from DHFL

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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An initial audit carried out on bankrupt Dewan Housing Finance Limited (DHFL) has found over Rs 17,000 crore were siphoned off from its accounts between 2006 and 2019. The forensic audit was initiated by DHFL’s Administrator R Subramaniakumar, who engaged Grant Thornton to conduct an investigation of the company’s books.

Lenders of DHFL have now filed an application in respect of disbursements made to certain entities referred to as the “Bandra Books Entities”, before the Mumbai bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT).

The NCLT application was filed by the Administrator on the basis of the initial findings of the audit report, against 87 respondents including Kapil Wadhawan, Dheeraj Wadhawan, Township Developers India, Wadhawan Holdings, Dheeraj Township Developers, Wadhawan Consolidated Holdings, Wadhawan Global Hotels & Resorts, Wadhawan Lifestyle Retail.

“It is to be noted that this is an initial filing based on the report submitted by the transaction auditor and further filings may be undertaken, in due course,” the company said in its exchange notification.

As per the auditor report, the monetary impact of the above transactions covered under the Application amount to Rs 14,046 crore outstanding in the books of the company as on June 30, 2019.

Further, another Rs 3,348 crore is considered as due and outstanding towards notional loss to DHFL on account of fraudulently charging lower rate of interest to certain entities referred to in the Application as the Bandra Book Entities, the notification said.

Lenders are therefore seeking the entire Rs 17,394 crore monetary impact, along with interest for the relevant period from the entities involved, the notice said.

Several lenders including State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Union Bank of India, Indian Bank, Punjab & Sind Bank have already reported DHFL as a fraud account. It is the first financial services company to be admitted into NCLT under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code for resolution under the newly introduced Section 227 of the IBC. Financial creditors alone have made claims of over Rs 86,892 crore against the company under NCLT.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Sushant Singh death case: Mumbai police appoints Grant Thornton as forensic auditor

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The Mumbai police on Tuesday has appointed Grant Thornton as a forensic auditor in the Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput death case, according to News18. The move comes soon after the Bihar government decided to recommend a CBI inquiry into the case on a request from the actor’s father.

The auditor will examine the financial transactions done from the actor’s bank account.

Sushant’s father Krishna Kumar Singh (74), who resides in Patna, had last month lodged a complaint with the Bihar Police against actress Rhea Chakraborty, her family members, and six others for abetment to suicide of his son and fraud.

He wanted a police investigation to ascertain where the Rs 15 crore deposited in a bank account held by Sushant was transferred.

The development comes a day before the Supreme Court is slated to hear a petition of Rajput’s rumoured girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty, an accused in the FIR filed in Patna, seeking transfer of the case to Mumbai, where an investigation in the matter is already on.

The state governments of Bihar and Maharashtra have already filed separate caveats in the top court seeking to be heard before any order is passed on Chakraborty’s plea. The father of the late actor has also filed a caveat in the apex court.

Rajput was found hanging in his rented apartment in Mumbai’s Bandra on June 14.

(With inputs from PTI)

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3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow