Hindenburg Research, the short-selling firm, suggested another major revelation involving an Indian company may be imminent. The firm posted a cryptic message on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, stating, “Something big soon India,” on August 10.
This comes over a year after Hindenburg published allegations against the Adani Group, accusing them of insider trading and stock market violations. The January 2023 report led to a significant drop in Adani Group stock prices, reportedly causing losses of over $100 billion.
The Adani Group has consistently denied all accusations made in the Hindenburg report. At the time of its release, the group dismissed the claims as baseless.
The situation has been further complicated by recent allegations from Mahesh Jethmalani, a senior Indian lawyer and BJP leader. In July, Jethmalani claimed that an American businessman with Chinese connections had commissioned the Hindenburg report on Adani. He specifically named Mark Kingdon of Kingdon Capital Management LLC as the alleged party behind the report.
Jethmalani also called on the government to investigate the links between political voices targeting the Adani group after the Hindenburg report and China, suggesting that the hit job on the Adani group was Chinese retaliation for losing out on infrastructure projects like the Haifa Port.
The Supreme Court has given a clean chit to the Adani group regarding the Hindenburg charges, based on a report by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). The apex court also recently dismissed a review petition to constitute a court-monitored Special Investigation Team (SIT) probe into the Adani-Hindenburg issue.
In June 2023, during the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Adani Enterprises, Group Chairman Gautam Adani addressed the allegations, stating that they were “faced with baseless accusations made by a foreign short seller, that questioned our decades of hard work.”
In June of this year, Hindenburg Research made headlines when it revealed that the capital market regulator, Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), had issued a notice alleging violations of Indian regulations against them. This development marked a significant turning point as Hindenburg Research, for the first time, explicitly identified Kotak Bank in its report. Consequently, this revelation led to a noticeable decline in Kotak Bank’s stock value, reaching its lowest point since June in the early trading session.
Hindenburg said that the June 27, 2024 notice from the Indian markets regulator was ‘nonsense’. “It was concocted to serve a pre-ordained purpose: an attempt to silence and intimidate those who expose corruption and fraud perpetrated by the most powerful individuals in India”.