Gautam Adani, the richest man in Asia, has decided to halt the sale of shares of his company, Adani Enterprises. On Wednesday, the price of shares of Adani Enterprises showed a steep decline after which Adani took this decision. After being called out by the American short-selling firm, Hindenburg Research, many questions were raised regarding the business practices opted for by Gautam Adani and his companies. Because of this, the share price of Adani Enterprises fell by almost 26% within just a span of a few days. Because of the report published by Hindenburg Research on Gautam Adani, the Adani Group has lost over $90 billion off of his company’s value. Because of this, Adani has declined in the ranking of richest persons in the world. After suffering such heavy loss, Adani Group released a 403-page report which tried to provide various pieces of evidence to deny the claims made by Hindenburg Research. But seeing how the company performed in the share market on Wednesday, it does not seem like the evidence played in favor of Adani. Thus, the Adani Group has made it clear that the $2.5 billion which it made through the sale of shares, would be returned to the investors.
The report by Hindenburg Research has had a tremendous impact on the wealth of Gautam Adani. According to the latest developments, Adni has fallen to rank 15 from rank 3 on the Forbes real-time billionaires list. It is a massive fall for anyone, especially because everything happened within just a single week. In January 2023, Adani's net worth was around $87 billion, making him the third richest man in the world. But as his companies lost $90 billion in valuation, his net worth dropped down to $75 billion, thus pushing him down to rank 15 on the Forbes list.
The Adani Group represents all the companies that are owned by Gautam Adani. Out of these companies, Adani Enterprises is the flagship or primary company of the Adani Group, which means that this company carries the utmost importance in the Adani Group. This is because Adani Enterprises handles some of the core businesses of the Group such as airports, trading, renewable energy, and many others. On the other hand, Hindenburg Research is a New York-based short-selling company. Short selling is betting against any company with an expectation that the company's share price will fall. As a part of this process, the firm questioned Adani regarding his business practices and how he managed to become the third richest person in the world within such a short period. Hindenburg Research presented a questionnaire to Adani with 88 questions in total. But out of these 88 questions, Adani only provided answers for 26 questions and the rest were either unanswered or the answers were not satisfactory. After this, Adani Group called out Hindenburg Research, claiming that the firm is just trying to use the Adani name to generate profit for their short-selling business. To this, the firm replied that the Adani Group is looting the Indians while hiding behind the Indian flag.
