November 21, 2024

Hindenburg Report: Clean Chit To Sebi And Adani Group By Expert Committee Appointed By The Supreme Court

By Linus Garg
First publised on 2023-05-20 07:18:07

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Linus tackles things head-on. He takes sides in his analysis and it fits excellently with our editorial policy. No 'maybe's' and 'allegedly' for him, only things in black and white.

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The Hindenburg report that had alleged share price rigging and other accounting malpractices on part of the Adani group and that had led to a crash in the price of the shares of the group's companies had led to the Supreme Court appointing a committee of experts to inquire into the regulatory framework in place in India and to find out whether there were any lapses on part of Sebi, the market regulator and whether the Adani group had in fact rigged share prices as alleged by Hindenburg. The expert committee comprised retired Supreme Court judge Justice AM Sapre, retired Bombay High Court judge Justice JP Devadhar, former State Bank of India Chairman OP Bhatt, former ICICI Bank chief KV Kamath, Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani and securities and regulatory expert Somasekhar Sundaresan.

The committee has submitted its report to the Supreme Court. It said that, prima facie, it found no evidence of price manipulation by the Adani group and no evidence of lapses on part of Sebi. In its report to the Supreme Court, the expert committee said that "at this stage, taking into account the explanations provided by SEBI, supported by empirical data, prima facie, it would not be possible for the committee to conclude that there has been a regulatory failure around the allegation of price manipulation." The committee also said that there was no pattern of abusive trading and that there was no regulatory failure regarding the provision of Minimum Public Shareholding as well as no violation of compliances.

However, the committee said that there was evidence (provided by Sebi) that some entities had taken a short position before the Hindenburg report was made public and had profited from the crash in prices after the report was made public, although there was no evidence of a pattern of wash or artificial trades by the same parties multiple times. The committee also gave a clean chit to the Adani group and said that it had taken steps to comfort retail investors and keep share prices stable following the crash.

After the expert committee report, Adani group shares reversed their recent slide and gained handsomely in late trades on Friday.