TotalEnergies caught up in the Adani scandal in India

“The biggest scam in history”of which the Indian giant Adani is accused in a detailed report of the American hedge fund Hindenburg Research, gave TotalEnergies a cold sweat. This text, published on January 24, accuses the Indian conglomerate of accounting fraud and manipulation that artificially inflated its valuation. Charges rejected by the Adani group which denounced an attack “unjustified” And “malicious ». In the space of a month, its market capitalization has shrunk by 60%, or the equivalent of 145 billion dollars (134 billion euros). At the beginning of March, the Indian Supreme Court formed a committee of experts to investigate possible irregularities.

Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers The shaken empire of Indian billionaire Adani

This time, Hindenburg Research, whose specialty is to bet on the fall in the price of companies with poor management, points to the role played by TotalEnergies in this ” scam “. The hedge fund takes its name from the disaster of the Hindenburg zeppelin, a giant airship destroyed by fire while landing in the United States in 1937, “a totally man-made and totally preventable disaster”says the fund on its website.

The founding boss of Hindenburg Research, Nathan Anderson details with the World the multiple grievances against the French major, while claiming not to have bet against it, while he speculated downward against the Adani group. Mr. Anderson accuses TotalEnergies of having “at best, closed your eyes and at worst, to have been an accomplice” of the problems of the Adani group, in connection with the manipulation of the stock market prices of two of its subsidiaries, Adani Green Energy and Adani Total Gas, of which the Frenchman is a co-shareholder. Charges to which the tricolor group refused to respond directly.

With a fine comb

After scrutinizing, for eighteen months, the balance sheets of the Indian giant Hindenburg Research said it was challenged by an operation involving the French oil company. In this case, its acquisition, in 2020, of 37.4% of the subsidiary Adani Gas, which has many gas distribution licenses in the country.

Indian law obliges any purchaser of a stake in a company listed on the stock exchange, to first file a takeover bid (OPA) before buying the shares of the main shareholders, in this case the Adani family. This was done in October 2019. TotalEnergies is offering to buy back more than 277 million shares for a total value of $584 million. But the takeover ended in a fiasco which was surprising: only 595 titles, out of the coveted 277 million, were sold to him for the paltry sum of 1,254 dollars.

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