A show cause notice, ostensibly issued by Sebi, released by Hindenburg in the public domain, also has the K-India Opportunities Fund as one of the six noticees. K-India Opportunities Fund is run by Kotak.
Also Read: Hindenburg claims it hardly made money by shorting Adani stocks & bonds
“While SEBI seemingly tied itself in knots to claim jurisdiction over us, its notice conspicuously failed to name the party that has an actual tie to India: Kotak Bank, one of India’s largest banks and brokerage firms founded by Uday Kotak, which created and oversaw the offshore fund structure used by our investor partner to bet against Adani,” Hindenburg said while responding to Sebi’s notice via a blog post.
The investment firm also trained guns on the bank’s founder Uday Kotak who personally led Sebi’s 2017 Committee on Corporate Governance.Also Read: Hindenburg faces Sebi scrutiny, Kotak Bank dragged in Adani saga”We suspect Sebi’s lack of mention of Kotak or any other Kotak board member may be meant to protect yet another powerful Indian businessman from the prospect of scrutiny, a role Sebi seems to embrace,” it said.The revelation brings additional pressure on Kotak Bank shares, which have moved up just 4% in the last 3 years and underperformed Sensex, Nifty, and most peers by a yawning margin.
Hindenburg has not named the investor who allegedly worked with Kotak.
“Prior media have cited sources close to SEBI and the ED who implied that we had 12 or even 16 investor partners in our Adani work…We only had one investor relationship in our Adani thesis, as is customary for our approach and as we have discussed in multiple public interviews,” the firm said, adding that it may come barely breakeven by shorting Adani shorts due to the high cost of conducting a two-year global investigation.
