Gautam Adani, chairman of Indian conglomerate Adani Group, at the World Congress of Accountants in Mumbai on Nov. 19, 2022. Founder Gautam Adani, Asia’s richest man and once second only to Elon Musk, dropped out of the top five richest in the world to seventh on Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.
Indranil Mukherjee Afp | Getty Images
Shares of most of the Adani Group companies continued to fall sharply for a third consecutive trading session as the company attempted to counter short seller Hindenburg’s report that accused the conglomerate of stock manipulation and an “accounting fraud”.
Adani Enterprises erased past gains of up to 10% and last traded flat in Mumbai’s midday trade after the group published a lengthy, more than 400-page response to Hindenburg’s report over the weekend, saying it will exercise its rights to “fix to pursue” to protect its investors “before all competent authorities.”
Share price of Adani Enterprises remains more than 25% lower in the month to date, data from Refinitiv showed. It continued with a $2.5 billion secondary share sale, which was overshadowed by a loss that wiped out a total of $48 billion from last week’s close.
Founder Gautam Adani, Asia’s richest man and once second only to Elon Musk, dropped from the top five richest in the world to seventh on Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.
His net worth is down $27.9 billion so far, the index showed. It peaked at $150 billion on Sept. 20, 2022, before falling to $92.7 billion from last week’s close, according to the index.
Despite small profits in Adani Enterprises, other Adani Group subsidiaries continued to decline.
‘Attack on India’
Adani Group said Hindenburg’s allegations were a “calculated attack on India, independence, integrity and quality of Indian institutions, and India’s growth story and ambition,” in the response released over the weekend.
The group’s chief financial officer, Jugeshinder Singh, said in an interview with CNBC subsidiary CNBC-TV18 that the value of Adani Enterprises has not changed “simply because of” share price volatility, adding that in it lies instead in his “ability to initiate new ventures.”
He added that he is confident Adani Enterprisesfollow-up to the public offering will be fully endorsed, calling Hindenburg’s report “just a lie” and the timing of the report “evil.”
Hindenburg Monday morning described the group’s response as “inflated” and claimed it “ignores every significant allegation” against the conglomerate it put forward.
“Fraud cannot be obscured by the nationalism of an inflated response that ignores every major allegation we have made,” is what the short salesman called his response to Adani Group.