A chain of dramatic events have unfolded since US short-seller Hindenburg research released its report on 24 January alleging the Adani Group of engaging in “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud”. 

Here is how the events rolled out:

January 24: Hindenburg Research publishes a report alleging that the Adani Group is pulling off the “largest con in corporate history”. It claims that the findings of its 2-year investigation “present evidence that the Rs 17.8 trillion (U.S. $218 billion) Indian conglomerate has engaged in a brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades”.

The report alleged that Vinod Adani (elder brother of Gautam Adani), through several close associates, manages a vast labyrinth of offshore shell entities. “We have identified 38 Mauritius shell entities controlled by Vinod Adani or close associates. We have identified entities that are also surreptitiously controlled by Vinod Adani in Cyprus, the UAE, Singapore, and several Caribbean Islands,” the report stated.

The charges include money laundering and accounting irregularities. According to the report, many of the Vinod Adani-associated entities have “collectively moved billions of dollars into Indian Adani publicly listed and private entities, often without required disclosure of the related party nature of the deals”. 

The key points in the report are over-valued shares; debt-driven business; promoters pledging their shares; and inadequate compliance.

January 25: Adani Group dismisses the report as “a malicious combination of selective misinformation and stale, baseless and discredited allegations that have been tested and rejected by India’s highest courts”. It also questions the timing of the report’s publication and states that the “principal objective” is to “damage” Adani Enterprises’s upcoming follow-on public offering (FPO). 

January 26: The Adani Group threatens legal action. Hindenburg dares it to file a lawsuit.

January 27: The Rs 20,000-crore FPO opens. The price band is Rs 3,112-Rs 3,276 per share. The response is muted and is subscribed just 0.01 times. The group loses $48 billion since January 25. Gautam Adani slips to the world’s seventh richest man, from the third position he held before the Hindenburg report. 

January 29: Adani Group comes out with a 413-page response to Hindenburg, denies any wrongdoing and calls the allegations a “calculated attack” on India, its institutions and growth story. It says the report was driven by "an ulterior motive" to "create a false market" to allow the US firm to make financial gains. Denying any wrongdoing, 

Hours later, Hindenburg hits back and says fraud cannot be obfuscated by nationalism.

January 30:  The Adani Group’s market losses ballooned to around $65 billion.

January 31:  The follow-on public offer of Adani Enterprises gets oversubscribed 1.12 times with support from family offices of various HNIs and top industrialists while retail investors stayed away.

February 1: The group withdraws its FPO amid the “unprecedented situation and the current market volatility”. The company says the interest of the investors is paramount.

The same day Credit Suisse and Citigroup stop accepting Adani’s bonds and securities as collateral.

February 2: Adani Group’s market losses swelled above  $100 billion. RBI asks banks to provide details of their exposure to the conglomerate. Sebi starts looking into the stock crash and Hindenburg’s allegations. In Parliament, the Opposition demands an investigation by a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) or a panel constituted by the Supreme Court.

February 3: NSE places three Adani group stocks - Adani Enterprises, Adani Ports, and Ambuja Cements - under additional surveillance measures to curb excessive volatility.

Adani group halves its market value in just 10 days of the Hindenburg report

SBI chairman Dinesh Khara says lender has exposure of around Rs 27,000 crore to the Adani Group. There are no concerns so far on this loan book and any further lending to the conglomerate’s projects would be evaluated on its own merit, he adds.

February 4: Adani Enterprises, the flagship entity of Adani Group, shelves its plan to raise as much as Rs 1,000 crore via its first-ever public sale of bonds after Hindenburg report.

Gautam Adani slips to No. 21 on Bloomberg Billionaires Index with a net worth of around $59 billion. 

February 6: Opposition parties take to the streets to press for a probe into allegations by Hindenburg against Adani.

Standard Chartered stops accepting Adani Group dollar bonds as collateral on margin loans,

February 7: S&P Dow Jones removes Adani Enterprises from sustainability indices.

February 8: Shares of Adani Group firms, a day after promoters of the company decide to prepay $1.11 billion (approximately Rs 9,200 crore) of loans ahead of maturity in 2024.

February 9: Financial index provider MSCI says it’s reviewing the free float designation of some of the conglomerate’s company securities.

Norway's $1.35 trillion sovereign wealth fund says it has in recent weeks divested virtually all its remaining shares in companies belonging to Adani group.

February 10: Supreme Court hears petitions raising concerns about steep investor losses sparked by Hindenburg report and says investors needed to be protected.

Gautam Adani remains absent at the global investors’ summit in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. The three-day event is inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in presence of Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath and prominent industrialists, including Mukesh Ambani and Kumar Mangalam Birla.

Moody's downgrades ratings outlook to negative from stable for some Adani Group companies. They are Adani Green Energy; Adani Green Energy Restricted Group; and two subsidiaries of Adani Transmission.

February 11: Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone, Adani Transmission and Adani Green Energy have pledged additional shares for lenders of Adani Enterprises, SBICAP Trustee Co says. 

February 15: Adani Power shelves Rs 7,017-crore plan to acquire DB Power, which owns a 1,200-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Janjgir Champa district of Chhattisgarh. The deadline to complete the transaction is allowed to expire on February 15, 2023. 

February 16: MSCI postpones implementation of updates to weightings for two of India's Adani Group companies, Adani Total Gas and Adani Transmission, to the May benchmark review.

February 17: Supreme Court rejects Centre’s plea and says it will set up an expert committee to look into the Hindenburg’s allegations.

Billionaire investor George Soros says prime minister Narendra Modi and Gautam Adani are “close allies” and their fate is “intertwined”. He further stated that “he may be naïve” but he expects a “democratic revival in India”.  There is political uproar over his remarks.

February 20: Adani Ports and SEZ pays SBI Mutual Funds' due amount of Rs 1,500 crore and will also pay another Rs 1,000 crore of commercial papers due in March (as per the payment scheme).

Gautam Adani’s wealth drops below $50 billion mark. He is now worth $47.9 billion, down to 25th spot in the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires list. 

He was worth $147 billion at a peak and was briefly the richest person in Asia and the second-richest person in the world with only Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk richer than him.

February 24: Supreme Court rejects plea seeking to gag media from reporting on Adani-Hindenburg issue till court pronounces its order.

February 27: Adani’s listed firms have together lost Rs 12.37 lakh crore (Rs 12,37,891.56 crore) in market valuation since the US short-seller came out with its report on January 24. The group's combined market capitalisation is now at Rs 6.81 lakh crore, down from Rs 19.19 lakh crore on January 24.

March 2: Supreme Court orders 6-member committee headed by former apex court judge A M Sapre to look into various regulatory aspects for stock markets.  Other members are Justice J P Devadhar, Somasekhar Sundaresan, Nandan Nilekani, O P Bhatt and K V Kamath.

GQG partners buys stake worth Rs 15,446 crore in four Adani Group companies through block deals. The companies included Adani Enterprises Ltd, Adani Ports and Export Economic zone, Adani Green Energy and Adani Transmission.

March 7:  Adani Group promoters prepay loans backed by shares worth $902 million or Rs 7,374 crore to foreign banks and Indian lenders ahead of their maturity in April 2025.

(UPDATED)