Hindenburg Research said Kotak Mahindra Bank setup an offshore fund structure to short Adani stocks, causing Kotak's shares to drop by up to 2% to a low of Rs 1,768 on the BSE. The investment firm also targeted Uday Kotak, the founder of the bank, who personally chaired Sebi's 2017 Committee on Corporate Governance.
After US-based activist investor Hindenburg Research said that created and oversaw an offshore fund structure used to bet against , shares of the private sector lender fell up to 2% to day's low at Rs 1,768 on BSE.A show cause notice, ostensibly issued by Sebi, released by Hindenburg in the public domain, also has the K-India Opportunities Fund as one of the six noticees. K-India Opportunities Fund is run by Kotak.
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"While SEBI seemingly tied itself in knots to claim jurisdiction over us, its notice conspicuously failed to name the party that has an actual tie to India: , one of India’s largest banks and brokerage firms founded by , which created and oversaw the offshore fund structure used by our investor partner to bet against Adani," Hindenburg said while responding to Sebi's notice via a blog post.
The investment firm also trained guns on the bank's founder Uday Kotak who personally led Sebi's 2017 Committee on Corporate Governance.
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"We suspect Sebi's lack of mention of Kotak or any other Kotak board member may be meant to protect yet another powerful Indian businessman from the prospect of scrutiny, a role Sebi seems to embrace," it said.
The revelation brings additional pressure on , which have moved up just 4% in the last 3 years and underperformed Sensex, Nifty, and most peers by a yawning margin.
Hindenburg has not named the investor who allegedly worked with Kotak.
"Prior media have cited sources close to SEBI and the ED who implied that we had 12 or even 16 investor partners in our Adani work...We only had one investor relationship in our Adani thesis, as is customary for our approach and as we have discussed in multiple public interviews," the firm said, adding that it may come barely breakeven by shorting Adani shorts due to the high cost of conducting a two-year global investigation.
Source: Stocks-Markets-Economic Times