The end of January is a time of optimism and pride in India. The short and not always pleasant winter is coming to an end, the trees are covered in colorful blooms, spring festivals are held all over the subcontinent, and India is gasping for air before the hot, long and terrible season begins.
● After losing 22 billion dollars in one day: Gautam Adani arrives in Israel
● The noisy minority gives a lesson in citizenship to the silent majority Interpretation
At the end of January, India also celebrates ‘Republic Day’. An impressive military and civilian parade was held in the center of Delhi, demonstrating India’s muscles and versatility. Most of the weapons on parade reflected local technological successes. Pra’chand attack helicopters hovered, Arjun tanks moved alongside NAG guided anti-aircraft missiles, Akash surface-to-air missiles, and of course Brahmos hypersonic missiles.
Decades of forgery
Large advertisements in newspapers confirmed the solemnity of the Republic Day. Even the Delhi Police posted one to boast of its successes in cracking down on terrorism. The Indian Navy bought a pillar, the Air Force bought, the Central Government bought, the Federal Police bought, Indian state governments bought. It seems obvious that everyone is making a welcome effort to subsidize the press.
The private sector also bought, and among the buyers was the giant corporation of the Adani family, whose owner is “the richest man in Asia” (according to Forbes). The Adani Group needed a page or two last week to announce a giant, two billion dollar IPO, the second largest in India’s history. Adani’s advertising habits will be noted by Israeli newspapers starving for ads with a degree of interest, because starting two weeks ago it is the joint owner of the Haifa port.
The timing of Republic Day and the day of the issue was going to bring good luck to Adani. In practice, it happened differently. On the eve of Republic Day, an American financial research company, called Hindenburg and engaged in short listing, published a severe report on Adani. She opened it with the announcement that she is submitting the findings of a two-year investigation (32,000 words, 106 pages) from which it appears that the Adani Group, whose market value in the middle of last week was 218 billion dollars, “has been engaged in blatant manipulation of shares and falsification of registers for decades.”
A quick and deadly hit
About the group’s boss, Gautam Adani, Hindenburg writes that he has amassed one hundred billion dollars in the last three years alone due to an 819% increase in the share prices of seven public companies under his control. Even if we ignore the ongoing investigations against the group, the seven aforementioned companies are trading at 85% above their value, according to Hindenburg. The full report can be read here.
The impact was swift and fatal and lightning struck the Mumbai Stock Exchange. In two days, 20 trillion rupees, or 52 billion dollars, were erased from Adani’s market value. Other large Indian companies, particularly banks, also recorded significant declines.
The editors of the Indian newspapers found it difficult to resist the temptation that the puns summoned them: “The Hindenburger stuck in Adani’s throat,” declared a newspaper in the city of Kolkata. “The Hindenburg is going up in flames,” declared another in the city of Mumbai, and saw himself forced to publish an entire article to explain to the Indian reader what happened to the airship Hindenburg in 1937 (it exploded), and even what happened to German President Hindenburg in 1933 (he handed Germany over to me Hitler).
Will Adani reveal documents?
The potential of all this is fundamentally unpredictable. Besides Haifa port, Adani Group owns 13 seaports and eight airports in India, has the largest private coal company in India, and has massive coal business overseas, especially in Australia. It promises to invest $70 billion in green energy in India by the end of the decade.
Adani revealed to the Financial Times newspaper a year ago that he intends to invest in gas-fired power plants in Israel. He also intends to build an international media empire that will give India the weight of the best known international media brands. It allocates four billion dollars for the development of a petrochemical complex on the coast of Gujarat, in western India.
Gujarat is one of the keys to understanding Adani’s conclusion and evaluating the results of the damage to its shares. Not only was he born there, but so was the powerful Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The connection between Modi’s rise to power in India and Adani’s rise is certainly not accidental. Modi took office as Prime Minister in Delhi in 2014, Adani’s shares have since risen by 3,000% or more. It can be said of him, in the spirit of the American proverb, that he “wrote the book” on capitalist rule; Or maybe not the book, but the encyclopedia.
Last summer, Adani took over India’s boldest independent television network, NDTV, a longtime critic of Modi dating back to his Gujarat days. We still don’t know the long-term results of the takeover, but it will be interesting to see what role the bilingual network (English and Hindi) will play in the next elections in India.
Adani’s response to the Hindenburg report was blunt: lies and conspiracies, she said. The group says it will sue Hindenburg. Hindenburg hastened to reply that she would rather be happy. She suggests that Adani file the lawsuit in its domicile, that is to say in the USA. Then she will be able to compel Adani to disclose internal documents.
Great response, especially the last sentence. https://t.co/MHs65Na96c
– Herb Greenberg (@herbgreenberg) January 26, 2023
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