Ravish Kumar resigns from NDTV: Senior Executive Editor of NDTV India Ravish Kumar has resigned from the channel. Ravish Kumar, a well-known face of NDTV (Hindi), hosted several programs during his tenure including Hum Log, Ravish Ki Report, Desh Ki Baat and Prime Time. The veteran journalist has been awarded the Ramnath Goenka Excellence Award for contribution to journalism twice and the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2019.
Ravish’s resignation has come at a time when NDTV’s executive co-chairman Pranav Rai had resigned from the post of director a day earlier. There were reports of Ravish Kumar’s resignation for several days. However, on Wednesday, he has officially submitted his resignation by sending mail.
Announcing Ravish’s departure, the channel said in an internal mail, his resignation is effective immediately. That means now Ravish will not be seen doing shows for NDTV. Let us tell you that New Delhi Television Limited (NDTV) founder Prannoy Roy and his wife Radhika Roy resigned as directors of RRPR Holding Pvt Ltd, a unit of the promoter group, on Tuesday.
In fact, the Adani group has now come close to acquiring this news channel. Amidst this development, the Roy couple have resigned as directors of RRPR Holding. It is noteworthy that Adani Group had acquired RRPR. RRPR holds 29.18 per cent stake in NDTV.
However, the Roys still holds 32.26 percent NDTV stake as a promoter and has not resigned from the board of directors of the news channel. Prannoy Roy is the chairperson of NDTV and Radhika Roy is Executive Director. NDTV said in information sent to the stock markets on Tuesday that Prannoy and Radhika Roy have resigned from the board of directors of RRPR Holding Private Limited (RRPRH) with immediate effect.
How did NDTV get sold to Adani?
The Roy couple had taken an interest-free loan of Rs 400 crore in 2009 from a company linked to Reliance Industries. This company was Vishwapradhan Commercial Private Limited (VCPL). In lieu of this loan, VCPL got the right to convert the warrants into shares of RRPR Holdings. RRPR Holdings holds 29.2 per cent stake in NDTV.
The Adani group had bought VCPL itself in August and talked about converting the warrants into shares. The promoters of NDTV had initially opposed the move, saying they were not in talks with them. But earlier this week they allowed it. This gave VCPL a 99.5 per cent stake in RRPR Holding.
RRPR (Radhika Roy Prannoy Roy Holdings Private Limited) is still the promoter entity. It has 29.18 percent stake in the news channel. Prannoy Roy holds 15.94 percent of NDTV and Radhika Roy holds 16.32 percent (total 32.26 percent).
Following the acquisition of VCPL, an open offer has been made by Adani Group to buy 26 per cent stake in NDTV. The offer opened on November 22 and will close on December 5. So far the offer has received offers for 53.27 lakh shares or one-third of the total size. However, the share price in the open offer is much lower than the current share price of NDTV.