The expert committee appointed by the Supreme Court has said the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) did not find any pattern of artificial trading or ``wash trades’’ during the period the Adani group stocks scored hefty gains on the bourses.
A detailed submission made by Sebi to the committee indicates that these firms were actually net sellers in flagship Adani Enterprises during Patch 4 (April 1, 2021 to Dec 31, 2022) when the price shot up from around Rs 1,031 to Rs 3,859.
The analysis of the transactions between March 1, 2020 and December 31, 2022 was broken up into four patches or periods — and none indicate that these entities were able to rig the prices of the scrips.
Sebi which has been probing the allegations made by Hindenburg was directed by the apex court to keep the panel appraised about its investigations.
Dwelling on the issue of price manipulation in Adani group stocks which was one of the key charges made by the US-based short seller, the committee said in its 178-page report that stock exchanges went through price movements in the conglomerate’s stocks on four occasions, report of which was submitted to the Sebi.
Two of these were much before the Hindenburg Report and the remaining two were after January 24, 2023.
The period of examination were from October 01, 2019 to September 18, 2020 (report received by Sebi on September 28, 2020); October 01, 2019 to April 30, 2021 and May 1, 2021 to December 31, 2022. The fourth was from October 24, 2022 to February 10, 2023.
The panel said that the stock exchanges prima facie did not find any evidence of ``artificiality to the price rise and did not find material to attribute the rise to any single entity or group of connected entities’’.
However, the market regulator submitted to the committee that it observed a set of common foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) were having shareholding across the Adani group firms which led to a further detailed examination.
``It appears that the report received in September 2020 coincided with the complaints received by Sebi in June 2020 and July 2020 and eventually led to the formal investigation that commenced on October 23, 2020’’, the committee said while adding the investigation then was not into any alleged price since there was no evidence of the FPIs having manipulated the stocks. However, Sebi’s probe into possible violations of minimum public shareholding (MPS) norms by the group was underway.
Further Sebi also submitted to the panel that the Adani group stocks were subject to various surveillance measures under the ASM (additional surveillance measure) framework.