Is Gautam Adani raring to face biggest challenge yet?

NEW DELHI: He was kidnapped by bandits in 1998 for ransom and when terrorists attacked Mumbai almost 11 years later, he was among the hostages held at the seafront Taj Hotel. College-dropout Gautam Adani’s knack of surviving crises and his business acumen has propelled him to the ranks of India’s richest but he now faces possibly the biggest challenge of his career.

Hindenburg Research, a tiny New York firm that specialises in short selling, brought out a scathing report that has led to his group shedding more than $50 billion in market value in just two trading sessions and Adani himself losing in excess of $20 billion, or about one-fifth of his total fortune.

The 60-year-old tycoon has now slipped behind Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to be the seventh-richest person in the world from the pre-Hindenburg position of being the third richest.

More than his personal status, at stake is the reputation of an empire the first-generation entrepreneur built over three-and-half decades. The immediate task is to see a Rs 20,000 crore follow-on share sale - the second largest in India - at his conglomerate’s flagship firm sail through.

Adani Enterprises Ltd’s FPO found investors for just 1 per cent of the shares on offer on the opening day on Friday when the company’s share price fell below the offer price because of the damning allegations in the Hindenburg report.

The issue, where the shares are being sold in a price band of Rs 3,112 to Rs 3,276, as of now closes on January 31. On Friday, Adani Enterprises closed at Rs 2,762.15 on the BSE.