LIC loses nearly ₹12,000 crore in seven Adani shares in a day on Gautam Adani’s civil indictment news. Here’s how | Stock Market News

Adani Group Stocks: Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), the country’s largest domestic institutional investor, saw its holdings in seven Adani stocks drop by nearly ₹12,000 crore in a single trading session on Thursday, November 21, following a sharp decline in group shares.

The shares of the Gautam Adani-led conglomerate plummeted by up to 20% after US prosecutors charged the billionaire founder in a $250 million bribery case.

As per the shareholding pattern as of September 2024 end, LIC held stakes in seven Adani companies – Adani Enterprises, Adani Ports, Adani Green Energy, Adani Energy Solutions, Adani Total Gas, ACC and Ambuja Cements. The insurance behemoth saw a ₹11,728 crore decline in the value of its holdings in these companies.

LIC experienced the largest decline in the value of its holding in Adani Ports, which fell by ₹5,009.88 crore, followed by a ₹3,012.91 crore loss in Adani Enterprises. The value of LIC’s stake in Ambuja Cement dropped by ₹1,207.83 crore.

Additionally, LIC’s holding in Adani Total Gas saw a decline of ₹807.48 crore, while in Adani Energy Solutions, it dropped by ₹716.45 crore, in Adani Green Energy by ₹592.05 crore, and in ACC by ₹381.66 crore.

Bribery Charges Against Adani

According to a Reuters report, U.S. authorities said Adani and seven other defendants, including his nephew Sagar Adani, agreed to pay about $265 million in bribes to Indian government officials to obtain contracts expected to yield $2 billion of profit over 20 years and develop India’s largest solar power plant project.

“A five-count criminal indictment was unsealed today in federal court in Brooklyn charging Gautam S. Adani, Sagar R. Adani and Vneet S. Jaain, executives of an Indian renewable-energy company (the Indian Energy Company), with conspiracies to commit securities and wire fraud and substantive securities fraud for their roles in a multi-billion-dollar scheme to obtain funds from U.S. investors and global financial institutions on the basis of false and misleading statements,” stated US Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York.

Adani Stocks In Freefall

Following these allegations, Adani Energy Solutions shares were locked in the 20 per cent lower circuit limit on Thursday at ₹697.70 apiece. Meanwhile, Nifty50 constituents Adani Enterprises and Adani Ports were trading 19 per cent and 15 per cent lower respectively, around 12.40 pm.

Adani Green Energy, Adani Total Gas, Adani Power, Adani Wilmar, ACC, Ambuja Cement and NDTV were down between 7 per cent and 18 per cent at the time of writing the report.

Overall, Adani Group companies witnessed an m-cap erosion of ₹2 lakh crore today. 

The indictment comes almost two years after a bombshell report by the US short-seller Hindenburg Research accused Adani of using tax havens improperly and engaging in stock manipulation, claims that the conglomerate has denied.

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