Skip to main content

India’s Adani Group has rebutted allegations of wrongdoing.

 India’s Adani Group has rebut­ted alleg­a­tions of wrong­do­ing by short seller Hinden­burg Research that

Adani group.

wiped more than $50bn from its value last week in a bid to calm investors in the middle of a $2.4bn share sale.

Yes­ter­day Adani pub­lished a doc­u­ment of 54 pages, plus some 350 more of appen­dices in which it argued that Hinden­burg’s report had «caused ser­i­ous and unpre­ced­en­ted adverse impact on our investors».

Adani Enter­prises, one of the group’s com­pan­ies, said over the week­end that its fol­low-on pub­lic offer­ing of shares would pro­ceed as planned, des­pite con­cerns that it would struggle to attract investors. The offer­ing was inten­ded to widen the share­holder register of the sprawl­ing indus­trial group, much of which is cur­rently owned by related entit­ies and Maur­i­tius-based funds. The offer­ing was launched on Fri­day, and books are set to close tomor­row. The short seller’s chal­lenge has caused a fris­son across India’s busi­ness com­munity: the com­pany has wide-ran­ging interests, includ­ing oil and gas, ports, air­ports and min­ing. It is one of India’s largest private infra­struc­ture groups, and, before the sell-off, Gautam Adani was the world’s third-richest per­son.

Adani said that «not one» of 88 ques­tions posed by Hinden­burg «is based on inde­pend­ent or journ­al­istic fact find­ing» and called them «select­ive regur­git­a­tions of pub­lic dis­clos­ures or rhet­or­ical innu­en­dos col­our­ing rumours as fact».

www.sba.tax

Comments

Cloud Bookkeeping

HS2 cost cuts new routes and add delays.

 Trans­port depart­ment offi­cials have begun work on «Project Sil­ver­light» sug­gest­ing the high­speed rail scheme might face four addi­tional years of delay. The planned High Speed 2 rail line faces fur­ther delays of up to four years and more cuts to the project under plans being drawn up by min­is­ters to rein in its bal­loon­ing costs. The extra delays to the coun­try’s biggest infra­struc­ture project would mean that it would not be com­pleted until as late as 2045 — 12 years after ori­gin­ally planned. «This is a func­tion of infla­tion; we are hav­ing to find huge sav­ings because the cost of everything the depart­ment is already doing will have become so much more expens­ive by then,» said one gov­ern­ment offi­cial. In Octo­ber, the FT repor­ted that the Treas­ury had asked HS2’s man­age­ment team to identify poten­tial cuts or «scope reduc­tions» to the high-speed line. Trans­port depart­ment offi­cials have sub­sequently begun work on Project Sil­ver­light aimed at fi...

Doubt on CS's collateral.

  Credit Suisse provided an emergency $140mn loan to Greensill Capital based partly on invoices to companies that deny ever doing the business stated on the documents. The Swiss bank provided the loan in October 2020, less than five months before the collapse of Greensill, a supply chain finance firm that counted former British prime minister David Cameron as a senior adviser. Invoices issued by metals magnate Sanjeev Gupta’s Liberty Commodities and sold to Greensill formed part of the collateral for the loan, according to documents seen by the Financial Times and people familiar with the transaction. Yet several of the parties named on the invoices have told the FT they did no business with Liberty. GFG has consistently denied any wrongdoing. Credit Suisse’s loan had a clause dictating that the collateral value had to be equal to or greater than the $140mn borrowed. The terms of the debt agreement only allowed invoices on Green-sill’s balance sheet to count towards this tally if t...

Tax cut

  Sterling tumbled against the dollar to below $1 . 09 ,  hitting its lowest point since 1985 ,  after UK chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng unveiled a £45bn debt-financed tax-cutting package that sparked a historic increase in borrowing costs .  Kwarteng’s political and economic gamble includes the biggest set of tax cuts for 50 years ,  with the end of the 45p additional rate for the highest earners as well as a sharp reduction in levies on dividends .  But concern over the amount of debt required to finance the tax cuts triggered a frenetic day of trading that raised doubts on whether Britain’s new economic approach was sustainable .  «Britain will be remembered for having pursued the worst macroeconomic policies of any major country in a long time» . Kwarteng has staked the political fortunes of the Conservative party on the bet that the radical tax cuts and deregulation will raise Britain’s sluggish growth rate to 2 . 5 per cent .  «This is a new appr...