InGovern dismisses Hindenburg report as “Not Activism”

In the last few days as the Adani group stock has been hit after the Hindenburg report, one of India’s leading proxy firms has dismissed the report as not being activist. InGovern has underlined that short selling would not tantamount to shareholder activism since it is more of a deliberately disruptive game to upset the stock market equilibrium. 

Even as the Hindenburg report has been getting accolades from star investor, Bill Ackman, not all regulators have been too pleased with these short sellers, who use advance aggressive reporting to depress the stock prices. In fact, Hindenburg admitted that they had taken short positions in Adani stocks and bonds before publishing the report. Already, in the US, short sellers like Hindenburg are under investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice.

Hindenburg has made allegations of offshore accounts linked to the group, which were used to jack up prices. However, there has been any evidence offered. The only thing that Hindenburg is betting on is that Adani would take them on legally, which will force the group to disclose a lot more information, which Hindenburg can use to its advantage. For now, Adani group has only given a detailed response to the 88 queries raised by Hindenburg. 

According to Adani group, the allegations were baseless but mischievously timed to coincide with their ongoing Rs20,000 crore FPO. The next few days could be interesting. For now, the Hindenburg report looks more like a nuisance value. InGovern has captured it best when it says that “Hindenburg has not brought forth any substantive evidence, other than repeating past allegations”. The question is, should Hindenburg be made to paid for mischief.