The fortune of the richest man in Asia, Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, shrank by $5.5 billion on Wednesday, writes Business Insider.
This comes after New York-based short-seller Hindenburg Research said that Adani’s conglomerate was involved in fraud and market manipulation: the Adani Group “engaged in a brazen scheme of stock manipulation and accounting fraud for decades,” which helped drive up the share prices of 7 key companies in the conglomerate, which in turn helped boost the industrialist’s equity by more than $100 billion over 3 years.
Adani, the head and founder of conglomerate Adani Group, has been in the spotlight over the past few years for his meteoric rise in equity capital, which has grown by more than 50% in 2022, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.
Adani Group’s CFO said the report was a “malicious combination of selective misinformation and outdated, unsubstantiated and discredited assertions.”
Nevertheless, shares of Adani’s listed companies fell after the report was published, with Adani Enterprises Ltd falling 3.7% on Wednesday and closing 1.5% lower, while Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone shares fell 7% to close 6.3% lower.