Richest Asian, Adani, targeted in $68B stock market rout

NEW DELHI (AP) — Asia’s richest man, Gautam Adani, saw his companies shed $68 billion in market value after short-selling firm Hindenburg Research accused him of “pulling the largest con in corporate history,” triggering a massive sell-off of Adani stocks.

The report last week from U.S.-based Hindenburg attacked India’s second-largest conglomerate for alleged stock price manipulation and fraud just as the group began a share offering meant to raise $2.5 billion.

Adani, 60, has since slid from a ranking of being the world’s third richest man to the 11th, as his net worth shrank more than $30 billion to an estimated $84 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.

WHO IS GAUTAM ADANI?

Son of a middle class family in Ahmedabad in western India's Gujarat state, Adani quit college to become a diamond trader in Mumbai, India’s financial capital. In the 1980s, he started importing plastics before establishing Adani Enterprises, which traded in everything from shoes to buckets and remains his flagship company.

India opened up its economy in the 1990s and a new middle class emerged as tens of millions of people escaped poverty and the economy boomed, prompting Adani to bet on infrastructure and coal.

Adani's first big project, the Mundra port in Gujarat, opened in 1998 and is now India's largest. Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd. is India’s biggest private port operator. Within a decade, Adani became India's largest developer and operator of coal mines. It has expanded to Australia and Indonesia and, according to Adani Power's website, is on track to be “one of the largest mining groups in the world.”

Adani companies operate airports in major cities, build roads, generate electricity, manufacture defense equipment, develop agricultural drones, sell cooking...