Gautam Adani would like to forget his tryst with a nightmare exactly a year ago.

It was on January 24 last year that US short seller Hindenburg Research came out with its damning report that accused the Indian tycoon reputed to be close to the Narendra Modi-government of accounting fraud and stock market manipulation through a labyrinth of offshore investment vehicles housed in several global tax havens.

The mayhem in the markets that followed saw the market valuation of the listed Adani group firms plunge from Rs 19.23 lakh crore on January 23, 2023 — the day before the release of the report — to below Rs 7 lakh crore in late February.

The group then had to face another volley of accusations from a network of journalists banded together under the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a bruising legal battle and a roving inquiry by the capital markets regulator.

A gut-wrenching year later, there are indications that the nightmare is almost over.

At the close of trading on Tuesday, the 10-listed stocks of the conglomerate had a combined market value of nearly Rs 14.65 lakh crore – reclaiming more than 76 per cent of the market value a year ago.

Gautam Adani is now the second richest Asian according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index with a net worth of $94.2 billion. After the Hindenburg report, he had slipped to the 25th spot.

The steady improvement in the market value has been attributed to investments made by GQG Capital Partners and the group’s decision to cut share-backed debt.

There were other plusses for the group as 2023 rolled on — the good showing of
the BJP in three states in December 2023, which raised hopes the party may return to power at the Centre, and the favourable Supreme Court judgement, which said there was no ground to transfer the Hindenburg case probe to a Special Investigation Team (SIT).