In its second offensive in India, the US-based Hindenburg, a self-confessed short-seller ‘research firm’ of no fixed address and five employees, has targeted Madhavi Buch, the first private sector and woman CEO of SEBI (Securities & Exchange Board of India). She is allegedly involved with an offshore investment fund connected with Vinod Adani, elder brother of Gautam Adani, India’s fast track infrastructure and development tycoon. In the first offensive in 2023 the target was Gautam Adani, one of India’s wealthiest individuals (assets value: Rs.11.61 lakh crore) and his several companies, for alleged listed shares price manipulation by offshore companies controlled by Vinod.

It’s important to bear in mind that for six years (2011-17), Madhavi Buch, an IIM-Ahmedabad alumna who began her career with ICICI Bank, was employed in Greater Pacific Capital, Singapore where she invested in a global investment fund perhaps without knowledge that Vinod Adani was also an investor. To draw an inference from this tangential circumstance that after she was appointed to the SEBI board in 2017 and chairperson in 2022, she colluded with Vinod Adani’s alleged manipulation of the shares of Adani Group companies in India is far-fetched speculation as argued by legal luminary Harish Salve on NDTV (owned by Adani).

The underlying problem of lefties and media pundits is that they have little understanding of the role and purpose of the stock market. Deep in their hearts they believe that stock exchanges are anti-social gambling casinos. They have little patience or understanding that the stock market is a forum on which entrepreneurs with big business ideas and management expertise can raise necessary capital to fund nation-building industrial and business projects.

In the circumstances, it reflects very poorly on duffers in the media that despite being aware of Hindenburg’s dubious antecedents, they have given high credibility and credence to this shady entity’s second effort to destabilise the Indian stock market and make a second killing.

Also read: Advice to Adani