Adani-Baiter Hindenburg Shuts Shop

Washington/New Delhi: HindenburgResearch, which made international waves with campaigns targeting billionaire Gautam Adani that wiped billions from market value of his group companies, will disband, its founder Nate Anderson announced on Thursday.

Announcement by Anderson, 40, who started Hindenburg in 2017, came just days before Donald Trump’s inauguration as the new President of the United States. While he cited the toll of the “rather intense, and at times, all encompassing” nature of the work as the reason for his decision”, critics were quick to link the shutting down Hindenburg’s alleged ties with George Soros and the so-called deep state being under significant pressure from the incoming Trump administration.

Adani Group CFO Jugeshinder Robbie Singh in a cryptic post on X said: “Kitne Ghazi Aaye, Kitne Ghazi Gaye” Typically, short-sellers like Anderson, who managed his firm’s own money, but not that of others, bet against companies they believe are plagued with mismanagement or involved in some fraud/scam. Short sellers borrow a stock to sell it in the expectation the price will fall, then repurchase the shares and pocket the difference. They book loss if the reverse happens. Hindenburg in January 2023 published a report accusing the Adani group of pulling the largest con in the corporate history”, wiping out more than $150 billion in value of the group’s shares at their lowest point. Adani group vehemently denied all the allegations including that being “engaged in a brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades” and improper use of offshore tax havens to shore up group share prices.

Business tycoon Adani was ranked world’s fourth-richest and Asia’s wealthiest person a day before the report was published. He slipped following the heavy selling witnessed in the group stocks. On Thursday, with a net worth of $75 billion, he was ranked at No.20, behind Mukesh Ambani (ranked 17th with $91.5 billion net worth).

“There is not one specific thing - no particular threat, no health issue and no big personal issue,” Anderson wrote in a letter posted on the firm’s website. The intensity and focus has come at the cost of missing a lot of the rest of the world and the people I care about. I now view Hindenburg as a chapter in my life, not a central thing that defines me.”

A graduate of international business management from the University of Connecticut, Nathan (Nate) Anderson founded a ‘forensic financial research’ firm to specialise in spotting wrongdoings and frauds, or what it calls man-made disasters, at companies around the globe and taking market bets against them. He named his firm after the German airship, Hindenburg, which caught fire and crashed in 1937 in what was seen as a man-made disaster as some 100 people were loaded on the balloon filled with hydrogen - the most flammable material in the universe. Hindenburg in 2020 went after electric truck maker Nikola, which led to a US jury convicting founder Trevor Milton of fraud two years later.

This month, it went after Ernie Garcia III’s Carvana Co, accusing him and his father, Ernie Garcia II, of an “accounting grift for the ages”. The auto retailers denied allegations and its stock soon recovered. Hindenburg’s past targets include Lordstown Motors Corp (US), Kandi (China), Clover Health (US) and Tecnoglass (Colombia). In 2023, it shorted Carl Icahn’s Icahn Enterprises and Jack Dorsey-led Block.