Almost a month after a bombshell short seller report lopped off $132 billion in market value from Gautam Adani’s empire, the Indian billionaire has hired top-shelf US crisis communication and legal teams, scrapped a $850 million coal plant purchase, reined in expenses, repaid some debt and promises to repay more.
The ports-to-power conglomerate helmed by Adani — who used to be Asia’s richest person — is hoping to claw back the narrative with this playbook and calm jittery investors and lenders after US-based Hindenburg Research on Jan. 24 accused it of accounting fraud, stock manipulation and other corporate governance lapses. The Adani Group denies these allegations.
Adani and his aides have been in damage repair mode ever since. Besides a campaign to portray themselves as responsible borrowers with prepayments and on-time payments of debt, executives have also kicked off a series of meetings to pacify overseas bondholders, who were tapped by the tycoon for more than $8 billion funding in recent years.
