Virat Kohli, Akshay Kumar, Salman Khan top Forbes India's 2019 Celebrity 100 list
Mumbai: Bollywood superstars Akshay Kumar and Salman Khan are among the top paid celebrities of India, Forbes India has announced.
The magazine has published its list of Celebrity 100 for the year 2019 which has been topped by Indian cricket captain Virat Kohli with the earning of Rs 252.72 crore.
The rankings are based on estimates of earnings through professions and endorsements of celebrities and estimates of their fame for the October 1, 2018 to September 30, 2019.
Akshay is highest earning star from the country with Rs 293.25 crore, registering a rise of 58.51 percent from the previous year, but is placed at the 2nd spot, followed by Salman with the earning of Rs 229.25 crore.
Megastar Amitabh Bachchan and Indian cricketer MS Dhoni are listed at 4th and 5th spots, with earnings of Rs 239.25 crore and Rs 135.93 crore, respectively.
They are followed closely by Shah Rukh Khan, who makes a comeback to the list, and Ranveer Singh, with the respective hauls of Rs 124.38 crores and Rs. 118.2 crores.
Despite all the talk about pay parity and inclusivity, the top-10 list has only two female stars and their earnings significantly lower than their male counterparts.
Alia Bhatt features at 8th with Rs 59.21 crore and Deepika Padukone at 10th with Rs 48 crore.
Cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar is placed 9th on the list with earning of Rs 76.96 crores. Forbes India noted that in the top 100 list, there was an improved representation from the South Indian film industry.
"There are 13 celebrities from the South this year (down from 15 in 2018) but their contribution to the cumulative earnings of the top 100 has increased to 12.57 percent from 11.26 percent in the previous year," it said.
"The inevitability of such lists being dominated by men, which itself tells a tale of the lack of pay parity across genders in every local film industry and in every sport.
"In cricket, a whopping Rs 6.5 crore separates top men players from the women when it comes to the central contract. But when it comes to performance, there is no gap," Brian Carvalho, Editor, Forbes India, in a statement.
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None of Adani portfolio companies subject to any legal case: Group CFO on promoter indictment in US
New Delhi, Nov 23: None of Adani group portfolio companies, comprising 11 listed firms, have been accused of any wrongdoing, conglomerate's CFO Jugeshinder Robbie Singh said on founder and chairman Gautam Adani's indictment on bribery charges in the US.
In a post on X, Singh said the group would make a detailed comment on the US indictment once it gets counsel approvals.
Adani and seven other defendants, including his nephew Sagar Adani, allegedly agreed to pay about USD 265 million in bribes to Indian government officials between approximately 2020 and 2024 to obtain lucrative solar energy supply contracts on terms that were expected to yield USD 2 billion of profit over 20 years, according to an indictment unsealed in a New York court on Wednesday.
The Securities and Exchange Commission of the US has also charged Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani, executives of Adani Green Energy Ltd and Cyril Cabanes, an executive of Azure Power Global, for "conduct arising out of a massive bribery scheme".
"There is a lot of news and reports that will try to pick unrelated items and create a headline. My humble request is that we will respond in the fullness of time once we review in detail the matter as presented in the legal filing," Singh said.
He hastened to add that no court has ruled on the indictment, and as outlined by lawyers of the US Department of Justice, these are "allegations and the accused have a presumption of innocence".
The CFO, who was the first line of defence when US short-seller Hindenburg Research had accused the ports-to-power conglomerate of fraud in January 2023, said the group became aware of the "specificity" of the US indictment against founder and chairman Gautam Adani two days ago.
"We were aware that something is afoot (and in February 2024 144a offering circular in Risk Factors we disclosed as such. This was the first public issuance of any of our portfolio companies or their subsidiaries or joint venture companies after our annual results of 31st March 2023)," he said.
He, however, did not state what the company had disclosed in February 2024.
Adani Group, he said, has a portfolio of 11 public companies and "none are subject to indictment (i.e. defendants in any legal proceedings in the recent DOJ lawyer filings to a court in NYC)".
"None of the issuers (i.e. companies in our portfolio or specific issuers that are subsidiaries of the public companies) are accused of any wrongdoing in the said legal filing," he said.
The indictment "relates to one contract of Adani Green, which is roughly 10 per cent of overall business of Adani Green (there is a lot more precise and comprehensive detail of this which we will elaborate in an appropriate forum)," he said.
The statement comes two days after Gautam Adani was charged by US prosecutors over his role in an alleged years-long scheme to pay USD 265 million (about RS 2,200 crore) bribes to Indian officials to secure solar energy contracts. The conglomerate has denied the allegations, calling them baseless, and announced plans to seek legal recourse.
The Adani Family has 11 listed entities on the Indian stock exchanges - flagship incubator Adani Enterprises Ltd, electricity producer Adani Power Ltd, ports company Adani Ports & SEZ, power transmission firm Adani Energy Solutions Limited, renewable arm Adani Green Energy Ltd (AGEL), city gas distributor Adani Total Gas Ltd, commodities firm Adani Wilmar Ltd, media firm New Delhi Television Ltd and cement companies Ambuja Cements Limited, ACC Ltd, and Sanghi Industries Ltd.
"There is a lot of news and reports that will try to pick unrelated items and create a headline. My humble request is that we will respond in the fullness of time once we review in detail the matter as presented in the legal filing (Please note that no court has ruled on this and as outlined by lawyers of DOJ these are 'allegations and accused have a presumption of innocence'). We will make a more detailed comment once we get counsel approvals to discuss what we can in public on a matter that is sub-judice," he added.
