Managed to tide over ‘malicious’ Hindenburg report, says Adani

Tribune News Service

Sandeep Dikshit

New Delhi, July 18

Billionaire industrialist Gautam Adani on Tuesday said his group’s assets and operating cash flows have got stronger and healthier and it will continue to consolidate what it has built while looking at expanding its horizons.

Targeted misinformation

The report was a deliberate and malicious attempt aimed at damaging our reputation and generating profits through a short-term drive-down of our stock prices.

Gautam Adani, industrialist

Speaking at the annual shareholders’ meeting of his group’s flagship Adani Enterprises, he slammed the Hindenburg Research’s report which caused a significant speed bump in the Adani Group’s untrammelled growth story for the past decade. The report triggered a meltdown by $150 billion in the market value of the group’s listed companies at the lowest point with Adani losing the richest Indian tag.

In a stinging denouement of the report, Adani said, “The report was a combination of targeted misinformation and discredited allegations, the majority dating from 2004 to 2015. They were all settled by the appropriate authorities at that time.”

“This report was a deliberate and malicious attempt aimed at damaging our reputation and generating profits through a short-term drive-down of our stock prices,” he added. But there was no word on whether Adani will carry through his threat of suing Hindenburg Research which he had made when the report came out in January and the Group’s listed stocks went into a free fall for some time.

“Our balance sheet, our assets, and our operating cash flows continue to get stronger and are now healthier than ever before. The pace at which we have made acquisitions and turned them around is unmatched across the national landscape and has fuelled a significant part of our expansion,” Adani said.

Adani said his ‘matrabhumi’ India had a tremendous growth potential and it offered great potential for his businesses.

Hindenburg had accused Adani of “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud” as well as using a “labyrinthian network” of shell companies. The Adani Group says it is “a calculated attack on India”.

The industrialist said the Supreme Court’s Expert Committee did not find any regulatory failure and while SEBI is yet to submit its report, “We remain confident of our governance and disclosure standards.”

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