I yr of Hindenburg Cunningly crafted lies didn’t stop us: Adani

New Delhi: A year after a damning report by a US short seller ripped through his apples-to-airport conglomerate, billionaire Gautam Adani on Thursday said the "trials and tribulations" of the past year have made the Adani group stronger as it continued on growth path, improving asset base and launching key projects, including the Dharavi redevelopment.

In a column, he said the Adani group raised Rs 40,000 crore of equity - equal to debt repayment for the next two years - through stake sales in some firms, repaid Rs 17,500 crore of margin-linked financing, and trimmed debt. Sustained focus on operations yielded the highest-ever quarterly profit in the second quarter of current fiscal, he said. Most of the listed group companies have recouped losses induced by the Hindenburg report.

"We remained committed to maintaining our growth momentum. The Group continued its investments, evidenced by our asset base growth to Rs 4.5 lakh crore," he said. "This period (of last one year) marked the launch of several key projects, including the world's largest renewable energy generation site in Khavda (in Gujarat), a new copper smelter, a green hydrogen ecosystem, and the long-awaited redevelopment of Dharavi (slums in Mumbai)." Adani termed Hindenburg Research's charge of fraud and stock market manipulation as "lies" and a "compilation" of "old and dead allegations" that his "detractors had been trying to resurrect".

"Fatuously self-styled as a research report", Hindenburg report "was a cunningly crafted set of selective half-truths sourced from disclosed and publicly available information," he said. He expected the point-by-point rebuttal of the allegations put by his group to quickly put an end to it but the skinned as much as $150 billion in market value of his conglomerates listed companies at the lowest point.