New Delhi, March 3,2023: One of the biggest names in emerging market investing is betting US$1.87 billion (S$2.5 billion) on Indian tycoon Gautam Adani’s empire, in the most significant show of support from a major money manager since a short-seller report lopped US$153 billion off the conglomerate’s market value, Bloomberg reported.

Rajiv Jain’s GQG Partners bought shares in four firms from an Adani family trust at discounts to Thursday’s closing prices, according to a statement from the Adani Group and exchange filings.

Jain’s investment comes as a vote of confidence at a crucial time for the beleaguered group, which has spent the past few weeks trying to repair an image damaged by Hindenburg Research’s accusations of accounting fraud and share price manipulation, Bloomberg reported.

The Adani Group will hold additional fixed income meetings with investors after such gatherings this week in Hong Kong and Singapore. It will hold meetings from March 7 to 15 in Dubai, London and the US, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Adani is a bold wager for Jain, the chairman of GQG, who is known to broadly prefer safe, defensive stocks of companies that have what he calls bulletproof balance sheets, Bloomberg reported.

Born and raised in India, Jain made his name as a star emerging market fund manager at Swiss firm Vontobel Asset Management. He later co-founded GQG and built it into a US$88 billion powerhouse with investments in industries like oil, tobacco and banking. In 2022, when most asset managers watched clients yank cash from their funds as markets cratered, Florida-based GQG thrived. The firm lured US$8 billion in fresh investment and three of its four flagship funds beat benchmark indexes by wide margins, Bloomberg reported.