India’s Adani Group on Thursday called US charges that their billionaire tycoon founder Gautam Adani had paid more than $250 million in bribes “baseless”, as the opposition leader demanded his arrest.The stiff denial came after shares in the industrialist’s conglomerate nosedived nearly 20 percent in Mumbai, the morning after a bombshell indictment in New York accused him of deliberately misleading international investors.Adani is a close ally of Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi and was at one point the world’s second-richest man, and critics have long accused him of improperly benefitting from their relationship.”The allegations made by the US Department of Justice and the US Securities and Exchange Commission against directors of Adani Green are baseless and denied,” the conglomerate said in a statement, adding that “all possible legal recourse will be sought”.But Congress Party leader Rahul Gandhi said the businessmen should be taken into custody.”We demand that Adani be immediately arrested. But we know that won’t happen as Modi is protecting him,” Gandhi told reporters in New Delhi.”Modi can’t act even if he wants to, because he is controlled by Adani.”Wednesday’s indictment accuses Adani and multiple subordinates of paying huge sums of more than $250 million in bribes to Indian officials for lucrative solar energy supply contracts.The deals were projected to generate more than $2 billion in profits after tax over roughly 20 years.None of the multiple defendants named in the case are in custody.- ‘Lied’ -Adani and two other board members of his Adani Group “lied about the bribery scheme as they sought to raise capital from US and international investors”, US attorney Breon Peace said in a statement.The indictment drove steep losses in flagship listed unit Adani Enterprises and multiple other subsidiaries immediately after the Mumbai stock exchange reopened on Thursday. The conglomerate’s renewable energy subsidiary, Adani Green Energy, said it had decided to halt a planned bond sale “in light of these developments”. Gautam’s nephew and board member Sagar Adani, who is also named in the indictment, told AFP in October that there was “no political connection” between Adani Group and the Modi government. “We basically set up what the government really needs, in their best interest,” he added.”All the projects we got have not been granted by any concession but through an independent and transparent auction system.”Modi’s government has yet to comment on the charges but a spokesman for his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Amit Malviya, said the indictment appeared to implicate opposition parties rather than his own. “Don’t get needlessly excited,” Malviya added, in a post on social media platform X. – ‘Fear of reprisal’ -With a business empire spanning coal, airports, cement and media, the Adani Group has weathered previous corporate fraud allegations and suffered a similar stock crash last year.The conglomerate saw $150 billion wiped from its market value in 2023 after a shock report by short-seller Hindenburg Research accused it of “brazen” corporate fraud.It claimed Adani Group had engaged in a “stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades”.The report also said a pattern of “government leniency towards the group”, stretching back decades, had left investors, journalists, citizens and politicians unwilling to challenge its conduct “for fear of reprisal”.Gautam Adani, the family-run conglomerate’s founder, denied Hindenburg’s original allegations and called its report a “deliberate attempt” to damage its image for the benefit of short-sellers.He saw his net worth shrink by around $60 billion in the two weeks following the release of the report and he is currently ranked by Forbes as the world’s 25th-richest person.- ‘Abject failure’ -Adani Group’s rapid expansion into capital-intensive businesses has also raised alarms in the past, with Fitch subsidiary and market researcher CreditSights warning in 2022 that it was “deeply over-leveraged”.Jairam Ramesh, a spokesman for Gandhi’s Congress party, said Thursday that the indictment “vindicates” their demand for a parliamentary inquiry into Adani.Ramesh condemned what he called the “abject failure” of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to hold the Adani Group “to account for the source of its investments”.Adani, born to a middle-class family in Ahmedabad, Gujarat state, dropped out of school at 16 and moved to the financial capital Mumbai to find work in the city’s lucrative gem trade. After a short stint in his brother’s plastics business, he launched the flagship family conglomerate that bears his name in 1988 by branching out into the export trade. 

Shares in Indian conglomerate Adani tanked on Thursday after its industrialist owner Gautam Adani was charged by US prosecutors with handing out more than $250 million in bribes for key contracts.The painful losses at units of the Adani Group came as markets in most of Asia retreated as blockbuster earnings from chip titan Nvidia smashed forecasts but fell short of investor hopes, while bitcoin hit another record as it pushes towards the $100,000 mark.Several listed subsidiaries of the Adani empire, which spans coal, airports, cement and media, collapsed in early trade, with some losing as much as 20 percent.The charges are another blow to the firm, which was sent reeling last year when a bombshell report from US investment firm Hindenburg Research claimed the conglomerate had engaged in a “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades”.The Adani Group on Thursday called the allegations “baseless”. The conglomerate’s flagship Adani Enterprises dived almost 20 percent, while several of its subsidiaries lost between 10 and 20 percent. However, Mumbai’s Sensex index saw more limited losses, giving up around 0.6 percent.All eyes had been on the release from Nvidia, which has been at the forefront of a global tech surge that has helped push some markets to multiple records owing to voracious demand for all things linked to artificial intelligence.And once again, the firm topped expectations, announcing Wednesday that it made a $19 billion profit on record high revenue in the July-September quarter, while sales reached $35.1 billion — about $2 billion more than estimated.However, its shares fell in after-hours trade, even as chief executive Jensen Huang declared that the “age of AI is in full steam, propelling a global shift to Nvidia computing” and that its keenly anticipated Blackwell processing platform is in full production.Observers said investors had been hoping for an even bigger blowout report, with Bloomberg saying some had been hoping for sales of as much as $41 billion.Its shares — which have soared more than 200 percent year to date — dropped four percent at one point after-hours.- Peak Nvidia? -With Nvidia now the world’s most expensive listed company, its results have become a bellwether of the tech industry.”I have a feeling we’ve reached peak Nvidia,” said Pendal Group’s Amy Xie Patrick on Bloomberg Television. “This is a stock that beat analyst estimates but didn’t beat enough.”And SPI Asset Management’s Stephen Innes added: “The bigger question remains: where exactly is the bar for Nvidia now? With expectations veiled in sky-high optimism, even seasoned analysts struggle to get a clear read.”With so many portfolios already brimming with Nvidia stock, some investors might see this quarter’s results as a minor letdown.” But he added: “Still, the strength of the numbers, paired with the pipeline of Blackwell chip orders, is enough to keep the dream alive.”Most markets in Asia fell, with Tokyo, Hong Kong, Sydney, Seoul, Singapore, Jakarta, Taipei, Bangkok and Manila in negative territory.Still, Shanghai and Wellington rose.London, Frankfurt and Paris all rose.Bitcoin topped out at $97,892 as it continued its march to the $100,000 mark on expectations Donald Trump will push through measures to ease regulations on cryptocurrencies. It has surged around 40 percent since the US election at the start of the month.Investors have also been spooked by developments in the Ukraine war after Russia said Kyiv had fired US-supplied missiles into the country. That was followed by reports that UK-supplied rockets had also been used.Traders are also keeping watch on Trump’s picks for his cabinet, with the fingering of China hawk Howard Lutnick for commerce secretary fuelling worries of another painful trade war.- Key figures around 0810 GMT -Tokyo – Nikkei 225: DOWN 0.9 percent at 38,026.17 (close)Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: DOWN 0.5 percent at 19,601.11 (close)Shanghai – Composite: UP 0.1 percent at 3,370.40 (close)London – FTSE 100: UP 0.2 percent at 8,102.55Euro/dollar: DOWN at $1.0538 from $1.0545 on WednesdayPound/dollar: DOWN at $1.2650 from $1.2652Dollar/yen: DOWN at 154.92 yen from 155.45 yenEuro/pound: UP at 83.30 pence from 83.33 penceWest Texas Intermediate: UP 0.9 percent at $69.37 per barrelBrent North Sea Crude: UP 0.8 percent at $73.39 per barrelNew York – Dow: DOWN 0.3 percent at 43,408.47 (close)

Sri Lanka’s new leader on Thursday backed a controversial IMF bailout, marking a U-turn from his election pledge to renegotiate the deal secured by his predecessor.Leftist President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who tightened his grip on power last week after winning a huge majority in the legislature following his own victory in September, vowed to maintain the IMF programme.Sri Lanka went to the IMF for a rescue package after the country defaulted on its $46 billion external debt in April 2022 during an unprecedented economic meltdown.The shortage of foreign exchange that left the country unable to finance even the most essential imports of food and fuel led to months of street protests and forced then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign.The $2.9 billion loan secured early last year required Colombo to sharply raise taxes, remove generous energy subsidies and agree to restructure more than 50 loss-making state enterprises.Dissanayake’s National People’s Power party had said it did not agree with the International Monetary Fund’s debt assessment and would renegotiate the bailout programme.But in his first address to the new parliament, where his party enjoys a two-thirds majority, Dissanayake said the economic recovery was too fragile to take risks.”The economy is in such a state that it cannot take the slightest shock… there is no room to make mistakes,” he said as he ruled out negotiations with either the IMF or creditors.”This is not the time to discuss if the terms are good or bad, if the agreement is favourable to us or not… The process had taken about two years and we cannot start all over again,” he said.The delayed third review of the four-year loan programme could be concluded by this weekend, with the finance ministry holding talks with a visiting IMF delegation in Colombo, he added.Sri Lanka expects the next tranche of about $330 million following an early approval from the board of the international lender of last resort.Dissanayake’s interim cabinet last month signed off on a controversial restructuring of $14.7 billion in foreign commercial credit tentatively agreed by predecessor Ranil Wickremesinghe.The debt restructuring is a key IMF demand to rebuild the island’s economy, which suffered its worst crisis in 2022 when it shrank 7.8 percent.The dissatisfaction with traditional politicians held responsible for the economic collapse was a key driver of Dissanayake’s electoral success.In June, the government concluded a deal with its bilateral lenders to restructure its official credit amounting to $6 billion, but formal agreements are yet to be signed.Under the deal announced on September 19, private creditors holding more than half of international sovereign bonds and foreign commercial loans to the South Asian nation agreed to a 27 percent haircut on their loans.They also agreed to a further 11 percent reduction on the interest owed to them.International sovereign bonds account for $12.5 billion and the balance of $2.2 billion is owed to the China Development Bank.