Share sale fails to halt Adani market slide in India

• Shares in Adani Enterprises fell more than 5%.
• Adani fell to the ninth position by Wednesday.
• Adani said it was the target of a “maliciously mischievous.”

MUMBAI: Despite a successful initial public offering, investors continued to dump shares in Indian tycoon Gautam Adani’s corporate empire on Wednesday, citing suspicions of significant accounting fraud from a short-seller investment group.

According to Bloomberg News, the fall has already wiped out about a third — or $76 billion — of the conglomerate’s value, while Adani’s personal fortune has dropped by more than $40 billion.

Adani Total Gas, which is owned by the French conglomerate TotalEnergies, led the collapse on Wednesday, with trading paused again following another 10% decrease.

Shares in Adani Enterprises fell more than 5%, despite the fact that a stock sale in the company on Tuesday was oversubscribed, despite smaller retail investors mostly staying away.

Adani, a school dropout, has seen his business grow at dizzying speed, with Adani Enterprises shares increasing by more than 1000% in the last five years.

This helped him become the world’s third-richest man last week, after Elon Musk and Bernard Arnault and family, but he had fallen to ninth position by Wednesday.

Adani has artificially raised the share prices of its units, according to US investment firm Hindenburg Research, by funneling money into the stocks through offshore tax havens.

This “blatant stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme” is the “biggest swindle in business history,” according to Hindenburg’s scathing report released last week.

Adani said it was the target of a “maliciously mischievous” reputational campaign and on Sunday issued a 413-page statement that said Hindenburg’s assertions were “nothing but a falsehood”.

In response, Hindenburg, which earns money by betting on stocks plummeting, stated that Adani’s statement failed to answer the majority of the problems presented in its study.

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