Adani Group shares fall after ‘stock manipulation, accounting fraud’ claim

PTI, Jan 26, 2023, 11:37 AM IST

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Shares of Adani Group companies tanked on Wednesday following a report which alleged that the conglomerate was “engaged in brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud over the decades”.

Shares of Adani Transmission fell 8.87 per cent to close at Rs 2,511.75 per scrip on the BSE. Besides, Adani Ports & SEZ plunged 6.30 per cent to settle at Rs 712.90 per share.

In addition, scrip of Adani Total Gas dived 5.59 per cent to end at Rs 3,668.15 apiece, while shares of Adani Wilmar and Adani Power tanked 5 per cent to settle the day at Rs 544.50 and Rs 261.10 per piece.

Shares of Adani Green Energy dipped 3.04 per cent and Adani’s flagship company Adani Enterprises declined 1.54 per cent.

Recently acquired cement players — Ambuja Cements and ACC — were also down by over 7 per cent, whereas its media firm New Delhi Television (NDTV) fell by 5 per cent on the BSE.

In the broader market, the 30-share BSE Sensex tumbled 773.69 points or 1.27 per cent to settle at 60,205.06 on Wednesday.

Well-known US activist investor Hindenburg Research in a report has alleged that Adani Group was engaged in brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud over the course of decades.

The report details a web of Adani-family-controlled offshore shell entities in tax havens spanning the Caribbean and Mauritius to the United Arab Emirates, which it claims were used to facilitate corruption, money laundering and taxpayer theft while siphoning off money from the group’s listed companies.

The report comes ahead of a Rs 20,000 crore follow-on share sale of Adani Group’s flagship Adani Enterprises.The Follow-on Public Offer (FPO) is slated to open on January 27 and close on January 31.

Reacting to the report, the conglomerate said, it was shocked to see the report that came out without any attempt to contact it to get the factual matrix.

“The report is a malicious combination of selective misinformation and stale, baseless and discredited allegations that have been tested and rejected by India’s highest courts,” the ports-to-energy conglomerate said in a statement.

It went on to question the timing of the report, saying its publication ahead of the FPO “clearly betrays a brazen, malafide intention to undermine Adani Group’s reputation with the principal objective of damaging” the issue.