India’s largest life insurer Life Insurance Corp (LIC) will soon hold a meeting with Adani Group’s top management and seek clarification on the crisis following the Hindenburg report, its chairman M R Kumar said.
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New Delhi: India’s largest life insurer Life Insurance Corp (LIC) will soon hold a meeting with Adani Group’s top management and seek clarification on the crisis being faced by the diversified conglomerate amid Hindenburg report. A Hindenburg Research report published last month has alleged that “Adani Group engaged in a brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades”.
LIC chairman M R Kumar confirmed about the meeting with the Adani Group’s top management where it will ask the Group on “how are they managing the whole crisis”. “Though our investor team has already sought clarifications from the Adanis, our top management could contact them yet as we have been busy preparing the results. We are soon going to call them to meet us and explain. We want to understand what is happening in the market and in the group. We will be calling them in sometime soon to know how are they managing the whole crisis,” LIC chairman M R Kumar was quoted as saying in a report by PTI.
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LIC’s investment into Adani group firms’ stock has come under criticism by the opposition parties as well as investors after US-based short-seller Hindenburg Research made a litany of allegations against the Gautam Adani-led group, saying its companies manage and manipulate share prices, run offshore shell companies for round-tripping and lacking in corporate governance practices.
LIC, which is the nation’s largest institutional investor, is the second largest shareholder in most of the listed Adani group companies, with a cumulative investment of Rs 36,474.78 crore as of January 27, which in percentage terms is 4.23 per cent of the total public holding in those companies. But for LIC’s Rs 44.76 lakh crore investment asset under management, this is only 0.97 per cent.
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As of January 27, this investment was valued at over Rs 56,000 crore, LIC had said on January 30, but since then these shares have further lost — cumulatively about $100 billion or about 60 per cent of their January 24 market value.
When asked, the chairman categorically said, “Our investments are still in the green and we have not made any provisions either for equity, which is the vast majority or for the debt. Our equity holding in the group is 4.23 per cent of the total public holding of those firms. But from our total market investment of Rs 44.76 lakh crore, this is only 0.97 per cent.”
