India’s Adani Group has published an angry rebuttal of allegations of wrongdoing by short seller Hindenburg Research that wiped more than $50bn from its value last week, in a bid to calm investors in the midst of a $2.4bn share sale. In the document, which has 54 pages plus some 350 more of appendices, the industrial conglomerate owned by billionaire Gautam Adani said Hindenburg’s report had “caused serious and unprecedented adverse impact on our investors”. The allegations were “not merely an unwarranted attack on any specific company but a calculated attack on India, the independence, integrity and quality of Indian institutions, and the growth story and ambition of India”, it said.
It went on to accuse the Hindenburg report of being intended to enable the US-based short seller to book gains, without citing evidence."This is rife with conflict of interest and intended only to create a false market in securities to enable Hindenburg, an admitted short seller, to book massive financial gain through wrongful means at the cost of countless investors," it added."Short-selling" is when someone bets against a company's share price in the expectation that it will fall.
It comes as Adani Group's flagship firm, Adani Enterprises, is this week pushing ahead with a $2.5bn share sale.Last week, a report published by Hindenburg questioned the Adani Group's ownership of companies in offshore tax havens such as Mauritius and the Caribbean.It also claimed Adani companies had "substantial debt" which put the entire group on a "precarious financial footing".But on Thursday, Adani Group said it was evaluating "remedial and punitive action" against Hindenburg Research in the US and India.