The drama around India’s richest man

In September, we wrote about Gautam Adani, the Indian business magnate whose net worth had catapulted him to the second spot on the world’s richest list at one point last year.

Adani is the chairman and founder of Adani Group, an Indian multinational conglomerate with arms in gas, power, ports, media, and others, worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

Last week, a lengthy — and we mean lengthy — report from short-seller firm Hindenburg Research accused the business of fraud. The report slashed ~$70B of value off Adani’s companies.

In the report, Hindenburg…

• Identified what it believes are multiple offshore shell entities Adani uses for manipulating finances.
• Shed light on a seemingly miniscule accounting group, with 11 employees, responsible for auditing Adani Enterprises.
• Listed 88 “easy questions to answer” for Adani.

Over the weekend, Adani Group issued a brief 413-page response — creatively titled, “Adani Response.”

Adani said its rebuttal answered 65 of Hindenburg’s questions, but Hindenburg said it failed to answer 62 of them and was “obfuscated by nationalism.”

Shares of Adani firms sank lower Monday, though Abu Dhabi’s International Holding Co. voiced confidence in the group, saying it’ll be investing $400m into Adani Enterprises.