Indian billionaire Gautam Adani loses race for $13 billion UK ports group

Indian billionaire Gautam Adani has lost the race to buy control of Associated British Ports, the UK's biggest port operator, after Australian fund manager IFM Investors agreed to buy a majority stake in a deal that values the company at about £10 billion ($13.4 billion).

IFM's Global Infrastructure Fund will buy the combined 63.9% stake held by two Canadian pension funds, CPP Investments and OMERS, ABP said on Wednesday in a statement to the London Stock Exchange. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd., India's largest private port operator, was one of four shortlisted bidders for the stake, alongside IFM and the private equity firms KKR and Apollo Global Management. It had also shown interest in buying all of ABP.

The deal would have given the 64-year-old billionaire's company its first ports in Britain. Adani Ports runs 15 ports in India and four abroad, in Israel, Tanzania, Sri Lanka and Australia, and wants to reach 1 billion tonnes of cargo capacity by 2030. When news of its interest in ABP first emerged in July, the company said it continuously evaluates opportunities that fit its long-term strategy and does not comment on market speculation.

Britain's biggest port operator

ABP owns 21 ports in England, Scotland and Wales, including Southampton and Immingham, and handles about a quarter of Britain's seaborne trade. Its ports also support more than half of the UK's offshore wind industry.

The Canadian funds put their stakes up for sale in February. OMERS first invested in ABP in 2006, when a consortium took the company private, and CPP Investments bought in 2015. Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC and Kuwait's Wren House Infrastructure will keep their minority holdings.

"Attracting investment from a fund managed by IFM Investors is a powerful endorsement of our business, our people and our strategy," said Henrik Pedersen, ABP's chief executive. Kyle Mangini, IFM's global head of infrastructure, said the deal "reflects our longstanding commitment to mobilising pension capital into UK infrastructure."

The sale needs regulatory approvals, including mandatory filings under Britain's national security rules, and is expected to close in the first half of 2027.

Rubio meeting and Adani Green results

Adani also met U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Mumbai on Wednesday morning, the first of Rubio's meetings with Indian business leaders before he flew to the Reliance Industries refinery complex in Jamnagar, owned by Mukesh Ambani. The meeting was closed to the media, and neither side released details of what was discussed.

The meeting came about two months after a U.S. federal court in New York dismissed, at the Justice Department's request, the criminal charges filed in 2024 that accused Adani of taking part in a scheme to bribe Indian officials. Adani denied the allegations. The dismissal was with prejudice, which means the charges cannot be brought again. Adani settled a parallel civil case with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by agreeing to pay a $6 million penalty, without admitting the allegations.

Also on Wednesday, Adani Green Energy Ltd., the group's renewable power company, reported a 16% rise in net profit to ₹747 crore ($78.8 million), or ₹7.47 billion, for the three months to Sept. 30, its fiscal second quarter. Revenue from operations rose 42% to ₹4,258 crore ($449 million), and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization rose 46% to ₹3,797 crore ($400 million).

The company sold 12,090 million units of electricity in the quarter, 33% more than a year earlier. Its operating capacity rose 24% to 20.8 gigawatts after it added 4,083 megawatts of new solar and wind plants over the year, most of it at Khavda in the western state of Gujarat, where it is building a 30-gigawatt renewable energy park. It aims to reach 50 gigawatts by 2030.

Adani Green shares fell as much as 4% to ₹1,247.95 in Mumbai trading after the results.