Supreme Court panel’s clean chit to Adani Group: Prima facie no violation

Mangalore Today News Network / NDTV

New Delhi, May 19, 2023: A Supreme Court-appointed panel of experts investigating the fallout of the Hindenburg allegations has given a clean chit to the Adani Group and said it appears there was no regulatory failure on the part of market regulator SEBI.

 

The Supreme Court panel of domain experts has said there was no price manipulation on the part of the Adani Group and the conglomerate had taken necessary steps to comfort retail investors.

The mitigating measures taken by the group had helped in building confidence in the stock and the stocks are stable now, the panel said.

The committee, which recently submitted its findings to the Supreme Court, said SEBI had found out some entities had taken a short position before the Hindenburg report and had profited after the price crashed following the report.

The committee found no pattern of artificial trading or wash trades among the same parties multiple times.

No coherent pattern of abusive trading came to light either, said the committee.

No regulatory failure was found regarding Minimum Public Shareholding and there was no violation of compliances, the committee said.

The committee clearly stated that the regulator had not been able to prove that its suspicion can be translated into a firm case of prosecuting an allegation of violation.

Foreign portfolio investors in Adani Group stocks are compliant with SEBI’s regulations, the committee said.

SEBI was asked to examine allegations of price manipulation in Adani stocks around the Hindenburg report. Several entities had taken short positions prior to the publication of the Hindenburg report, and since SEBI’s investigation into it is ongoing, the committee has chosen not to comment on the merits of this issue.

However, the Indian market was not unduly volatile during the period. The impact of Adani Group-related events on the overall market was low, as its index weightage was nil in Sensex-30 and around 2% in the Nifty 50.