Gautam Adani terms Hindenburg report as ‘targeted misinformation', says US short-seller profited from Adani shares fall

Gautam Adani, Chairman of the Adani Group, said that the report released by US-based short seller Hindenburg Research, alleging the conglomerate of stock manipulation and other financial irregularities, was a combination of ‘targeted misinformation and outdated, discredited allegations’ aimed at damaging the conglomerate’s reputation.

In his message to shareholders, Adani said that Hindenburg generated profits through a deliberate drive-down of Adani group stock prices.

“On the eve of our Republic Day, a US-based shortseller published a report just as we were planning to launch the largest Follow-on Public Offering (FPO) in India’s history. The report was a combination of targeted misinformation and outdated, discredited allegations aimed at damaging our reputation and generating profits through a deliberate drive-down of our stock prices,” Adani said in the company's annual report.

He added that despite a fully subscribed FPO, the company decided to withdraw and return the money to investors to protect their interests. 

Moreover, the short-selling incident resulted in several adverse consequences that the company had to confront, he added.

“Even though we promptly issued a comprehensive rebuttal, various vested interests tried to opportunistically exploit the claims made by the short seller. These entities engaged and encouraged false narratives across various news and social media platforms,” Adani said.

He also noted that the Supreme Court of India constituted an Expert Committee to look into this matter which did not find any regulatory failure by the group.

Read here: Supreme Court panel's report on Adani-Hindenburg row made public; here's what it says

“The Committee’s Report not only observed that the mitigating measures, undertaken by your company helped rebuild confidence but also cited that there were credible charges of concerted destabilization of the Indian markets. It also confirmed the quality of our Group’s disclosures and found no instance of regulatory failure or any breach,” the chairman said. 

While the SEBI is still to submit its report in the months ahead, we remain confident of our governance and disclosure standards, he added.

Shares of Adani Group witnessed a significant erosion in market capitalisation since the release of the Hindenburg report on January 24, which alleged the group of fraudulent transactions, brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme.