Adani confident of FPO sailing through

New Delhi: Richest Asian Gautam Adani's group on Sunday expressed confidence that the Rs 20,000 crore follow-on share sale of its flagship firm will sail through despite a massive hammering of the conglomerate's stocks following a scathing report by a US-based short seller.

Group CFO Jugeshinder Singh said no change in offering price or schedule is being considered due to temporary volatility in the market as the follow-on public offer (FPO) of Adani Enterprises Ltd is the best vehicle for strategic institutional investors to own a pie of the conglomerate's fast expanding airports, mining, roads, new energy and data centre businesses.

All seven Adani group companies' stocks fell sharply over the last two trading sessions, wiping out Rs10.7 lakh crore of investor wealth after Hindenburg Research alleged that the ports-to-energy-to-cement conglomerate had engaged in "brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud" for decades. The sell-off is being looked into by market regulator SEBI and stock exchanges. In an interview to PTI, Singh said the group will release a comprehensive response to the Hindenburg report, "providing documentary evidence" to "clearly outline that there was no research done and that there wasn't any investigating reporting. Only pure baseless misrepresentation of factual situations, if not lies."

He cited an example of the Hindenburg report alleging that inflation in revenue was visible from an asset transferred to a private company and the private company immediately writing down that asset.