Most Adani shares proceed to fall; Founder loses $28 billion a month

Gautam Adani, chairman of Indian conglomerate Adani Group, at the World Congress of Accountants in Mumbai November 19, 2022. Founder Gautam Adani, the richest man in Asia and once second only to Elon Musk, fell to seventh out of the world’s five richest in Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.

Indranil Mukherjee AFP | Getty Images

Shares in most of the Adani Group companies continued to post sharp losses for a third straight trading session as the company tried to disprove short seller Hindenburg’s report accusing the conglomerate of stock manipulation and an “accounting fraud”.

Adani company erased earlier gains of up to 10% and last traded unchanged in Mumbai afternoon trade after the group published a lengthy 400-page response to Hindenburg’s report over the weekend, saying it would exercise its right to “remedies.” to take” to protect their investors “from any relevant authorities.”

Adani Enterprises stock price is down more than 25% month to date, data from Refinitiv showed. It continued with a $2.5 billion secondary stock sale that was marred by a loss that wiped out a total of $48 billion by last week’s close.

Founder Gautam Adani, the richest man in Asia and once second only to Elon Musk, has fallen from the five richest in the world to seventh on Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.

His net worth fell $27.9 billion year to date, the index showed. It peaked at $150 billion on September 20, 2022, according to the index, before falling to $92.7 billion at last week’s close.

Despite small profits at Adani Enterprises, other subsidiaries of the Adani group continued to collapse.

“Attack on India”

The Adani Group said in the response released over the weekend Hindenburg’s allegations were a “calculated attack on India, the independence, integrity and quality of Indian institutions, and India’s growth history and ambition”.

The group’s chief financial officer, Jugeshinder Singh, said in an interview with CNBC-TV18, a CNBC affiliate, that Adani Enterprises’ value has not changed “simply because” of stock price volatility, adding that instead it is based on its “ability “To incubate something new” lies company.”

He added that he was confident Adani companyThe public offering that follows is signed in full, calling Hindenburg’s report “simply a lie” and the timing of the report “malicious.”

Hindenburg described the group’s response Monday morning as “bloated” and claimed it “ignores every important allegation” against the conglomerate it has made.

“Fraud cannot be cloaked in the nationalism of a bloated response that ignores every important allegation we have made,” the short seller captioned his response to Adani Group.