After activist investment company Hindenburg Research accused billionaire businessman Gautam Adani's Grupo Adani of perpetrating fraud, Adani's net worth plummeted and he fell to the position of world's third-richest person. As a result of the claims, the conglomerate's bonds and stock prices dropped.
Nathan Anderson established Hindenburg Research in 2017 as a forensic financial research business specialising on equities, credit, and derivatives analysis. Hindenburg claims on its website to investigate "man-made catastrophes" such financial discrepancies, poor management, and hidden related-party transactions. The business uses its own money to finance its investments.
According to a study written by Hindenburg, the firms comprising this conglomerate, which are owned by Asia's wealthiest man, have been engaged in “a brazen scheme of stock manipulation and accounting fraud for decades.”
The report alleging Adani of plotting to manipulate the business's share price was produced by a well-known seller of the company in question. After that, Amazon's Jeff Bezos replaced Adani as the world's wealthiest individual.
Who is Nathan Anderson?
After receiving his bachelor's degree in international business from the University of Connecticut, 38-year-old Nathan Anderson started his career in finance working with investment management businesses at the data company FactSet Research Systems Inc.
He gave an interview to the WSJ in 2020, saying, “I noticed they were doing a lot of run-of-the-mill analysis, there was a lot of compliance.” Earlier in his life, he worked as an Israeli ambulance driver.
He spent some time as a college student in Israel, where he served as a paramedic and attended lectures at the Hebrew University. He then went on to work for a financial research business before beginning to explore investment opportunities for rich families. One of his favourite things to do is "finding scams."
According to his LinkedIn profile, the short seller gained "experience of thinking and acting under great pressure" from the transaction. In interviews, Anderson has praised Harry Markpolos, the analyst who exposed Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme.
Also, READ: Hindenburg vs Adani Group: SBI, LIC savings at risk amid fraud allegations? SBI says THIS
According to its website, Hindenburg has reported suspicious activity at 16 different businesses since 2017. Throughout the course of last year, it had both short and long positions in Twitter Inc. Since Elon Musk's USD 44 billion plan to take the firm private may be repriced lower if the world's wealthiest person backed out, Hindenburg said in May that it was short on the stock. Anderson came out in July to say that he had a "large long position" against Musk. Twitter's purchase was completed in October at the agreed upon amount.
(With inputs from Reuters)
