Billionaire Anil Agarwal is planning to delist his flagship firm Vedanta Resources Plc from the London Stock Exchange, The Economic Times reported on Monday.
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Criticism against the group’s mining operations has been building up over the years and recently peaked with a dozen protesters against a Vedanta project losing their lives in Tamil Nadu, the report said.
Following the death of 13 people during violent protests against the mining giant’s Sterlite copper smelter in Tuticorin, Tamil Nadu, in May, UK’s opposition Labour Party had called for Vedanta Resources to be delisted from the London Stock Exchange, according to the report.
John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, said removing Vedanta Resources from the London financial markets would prevent reputational damage from the “rogue” company, which has been operating “illegal” mining concerns for years.
“The delisting plan has been ongoing for a long time and the group keeps revisiting it,” an official aware of Agarwal’s plans told The Economic Times on condition of anonymity. “But now with so much of opposition and a favourable stock price, plans of the buyback have got revived in the last few weeks.”
Vedanta Resources owns 50.1 percent of Vedanta Ltd that houses Agarwal’s sprawling Indian zinc, copper, silver, lead, iron ore, power and aluminium mining operations.