The Adani Group has been a consistent newsmaker for the last 12 months. This time, though, the ports-to-energy conglomerate has been put under the critical lens of US-based short seller Hindenburg Research. The latter has alleged stock manipulation and accounting irregularities at the Gautam Adani-led company.
Needless to say, people’s curiosity around the news has hit the roof. On Monday, the first day of trading since the Hindenburg report was released, searches for ‘Adani Enterprise share price’ crossed a staggering one million, according to Google Trends data. The top 5 regions leading the searches were Haryana, Gujarat, Delhi, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra, data revealed.
Other trending keywords that caught up with the public included ‘Adani Power share’ and ‘Adani Transmission share price’ with both recording 100,000+ searches each on Monday. ‘Adani FPO’ came next with 50,000+ searches. Three of the top 4 and four of the top 10 searches from India on Monday had to do with the Adani Group, Google Trends data further showed. On Friday, ‘Adani Enterprise share’ had clocked 100,000+ searches.
Other related keywords dominating people’s attention spans in the last couple of days included ‘did adani buy hindenburg research’, which recorded a 1,150 per cent growth in searches, and ‘hindenburg banned in US’ whose search was up a whopping 1,950 per cent, per Google Trends.
On Monday, Adani Enterprises shares rallied 9 per cent, even though other group companies viz. Adani Total Gas, Adani Transmission, and Adani Green tumbled up to 20 per cent.
On Tuesday, shares of Adani Enterprises jumped 5 per cent in morning trade after International Holding Company (IHC) announced a Rs 3,200 crore-investment in the Adani Group flagship’s follow-on public offer (FPO).
Commenting on the Hindenburg report and Adani Group’s 413-page response to the short seller, CFO Jugeshinder Singh told Business Today TV that the conglomerate had consistently scored high governance ratings. “On our governance rating, if you look at the Adani Ports, its DJSI score puts it in the top 3 per cent in the world on governance. If you look at Adani Transmission, fully compliant with [the] six principles of TCFT. If you look at Adani Enterprises, its DJSI score out of 135 global companies is at number 7,” he explained.
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