Adani shares fall as short-seller Hindenburg Research flags its ‘substantial debt’

Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani. File
| Photo Credit: AFP

Shares of the Adani group’s listed companies, including its recently acquired cement and media units, fell across the board on Wednesday with losses ranging from 1.5% to 8% in the wake of U.S. based short-seller Hindenburg Research raising concerns about the Gujarat-based conglomerate’s “substantial debt” that had put the entire group on a “precarious financial footing.”

“Today we reveal the findings of our 2-year investigation, presenting evidence that the… Adani Group has engaged in a brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades,” Hindenburg Research said in its report published on its website on January 24. “Our research involved speaking with dozens of individuals, including former senior executives of the Adani Group, reviewing thousands of documents” and site visits in almost half a dozen countries, it said, adding that it had “taken a short position” on Adani group companies through U.S.-traded bonds and derivative instruments traded outside India.

The Adani group dismissed the report terming it a “malicious combination of selective misinformation and stale, baseless and discredited allegations”.

“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,” Group CFO Jugeshinder Singh said in a statement. 

The group’s flagship company Adani Enterprises is set to tap the market with a ₹20,000 crore follow-on public offering that opens to the public on January 27.