Adani on Sunday called the New York-based short-seller Hindenburg Research’s report “a calculated attack on India”, its institutions and the country’s growth story and its ambitions.
Hindenburg Research in its report titled “Adani Group – How The World’s 3rd Richest Man Is Pulling The Largest Con In Corporate History’” made serious allegations against the company, giving a downside of 85% most Adani stocks “purely on basis of company fundamentals”.
The damaging report scrapped Rs 2.3 lakh crore off the market capitalization of seven Adani Group stocks—Adani Transmission, Adani Green Energy, Adani Total Gas, Adani Power and Adani Wilmar.
On Friday, Adani Transmission, Adani Green Energy, and Adani Total Gas closed at 20% lower circuits each. While Adani Power and Adani Wilmar hit 5% lower circuits each. Adani Ports tumbled by over 16%at the end of the day.
In an earlier statement, Adani Enterprises Chief Financial Officer Jugeshinder Singh alleged that Hindenburg Research did not make “any attempt to contact us or verify the factual matrix”.
“The report is a malicious combination of selective misinformation and stale, baseless and discredited allegations that have been tested and rejected by India’s highest courts. The timing of the report’s publication clearly betrays a brazen, mala fide intention to undermine the Adani Group’s reputation with the principal objective of damaging the upcoming Follow-on Public Offering from Adani Enterprises, the biggest FPO ever in India”.
The report substantially damaged Adani’s FPO as prices in the open market crashed lower that those offered in the FPO. As of Friday’s market close, the subscription in the issue stood at just 1% as investors stayed away.
Adani Group threatened legal action against Hindenburg Research—a threat welcomed by Nathan Anderson-founded the investment research firm.
“In the 36 hours since we released our report, Adani hasn’t addressed a single substantive issue we raised. At the conclusion of our report, we asked 88 straightforward questions that we believe give the company a chance to be transparent. Thus far, Adani has answered none of these questions. Instead, as expected, Adani has resorted to bluster and threats Ina statement to media today, Adani referred to our 106-page, 32,000-word report, with over 720 citations and prepared over the course of 2 years, as “Luiresearchecl” and said it is “evaluating the relevant provisions under U.S. and Indian laws for remedial and punitive action” against us.
Regarding the company’s threats of legal action, to be dear, we would welcome it We fully stand by our report and believe any legal action taken against us would be meritless.
If Adani is serious, it should also file suit in the U.S. where we operate. We have a long list of documents we would demand in a legal discovery process,” the investor activist firm replied.
