Adani shares nosedive as Indian tycoon drops down rich list
Mumbai, India – Shares in Gautam Adani's empire nosedived again on Wednesday as the Indian tycoon dropped off the Forbes top 10 rich list following allegations of massive accounting fraud.
The five-day rout has now wiped out around Us$92bn of the value of the conglomerate's listed units, Bloomberg News said, while Adani's fortune has collapsed by more than Us$40bn.
The share price of flagship firm Adani Enterprises suddenly dropped further on Wednesday afternoon, closing 28.45 per cent lower on the Mumbai stock exchange.
The trigger was news that Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse had stopped accepting Adani bonds as collateral for loans it advances to private banking clients, Bloomberg reported.
The slide in Adani's personal wealth on the real-time Forbes rich list meant that the school dropout billionaire was overtaken as Asia's richest man by fellow Indian Mukesh Ambani.
Adani Total Gas - in which French giant Totalenergies owns 37.4 per cent - dropped another 10 per cent on Wednesday, forcing the Bombay Stock Exchange to suspend trade in the stock soon after the market's open.
Adani Ports dropped almost 18 per cent, while Adani Power and Adani Wilmar fell five per cent each.
The sudden sharp drop in Adani Enterprises came despite a Us$2.5bn stock sale in the firm that concluded on Tuesday and was oversubscribed.
Smaller retail investors largely steered clear from the follow-on public offering, however, impeding Adani's plans to expand his shareholder base to include "the average, normal Indian mom and dad as shareholders".
Large buyers instead propped up the share sale, including fellow Indian tycoons Sajjan Jindal and Sunil Mittal, Bloomberg News reported, citing unidentified sources.
Publicity-shy Adani, 60, has seen his empire expand at breakneck speed, with shares in Adani Enterprises soaring by more than a thousand per cent over the past five years.
This helped make him, as of last week, the world's third-richest man behind Elon Musk and Bernard Arnault and family.
According to US short-seller investment group Hindenburg Research, Adani has artificially boosted the share prices of its units by funnelling money into the stocks through offshore tax havens.