Hindenburg Research, the US short-seller that targeted Indian billionaire Gautam Adani's conglomerate in 2023, is winding up, its founder Nate Anderson said.

"I have made the decision to disband Hindenburg Research. The plan has been to wind up after we finished the pipeline of ideas we were working on," Anderson wrote in a letter posted on the firm's website.

In January 2023, Hindenburg published a bombshell report alleging fraud and false accounting at the Adani Group. The report led to a collapse in the share prices of seven listed group companies and forced Adani Enterprises to scrap a Rs200bn (US$2.3bn) follow-on and an up to Rs10bn public bond issue. Adani has consistently denied all the charges.

The short-seller subsequently alleged last August that India's market regulator had failed to investigate Adani Enterprises thoroughly in the wake of its claims of wrongdoing because of an apparent conflict of interest, questioning the integrity of Sebi chair Madhabi Buch. Buch dismissed the claims, and Buch and Sebi said the regulator had procedures in place to address potential conflicts of interests.

Besides Adani, Hindenburg has also taken on US billionaires Jack Dorsey and Carl Icahn over the years. In March 2023, the firm alleged that Dorsey's payments company Block overstated user numbers and understated customer acquisition costs. Block called the report "factually inaccurate and misleading." In May that year, Hindenburg alleged Icahn Enterprises misled investors by masking details about his risky personal margin loans. The US Securities and Exchange Commission in August 2024 charged Icahn over allegations that he misled investors by failing to disclose his multi-billion margin loans, fining him US$2m to settle the charges.

Anderson first submitted a whistleblower report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission in 2014 relating to RD Legal, a hedge fund that was later charged by the commission for making material misstatements to its investors. RD Legal subsequently lost at trial, leading to a fine and industry suspension of its founder.

"Nearly 100 individuals have been charged civilly or criminally by regulators at least in part through our work, including billionaires and oligarchs. We shook some empires that we felt needed shaking," Anderson wrote in his letter.

Anderson said he had built a team of 11 people over the years, adding that some of them will now be starting their own research firm.

"So, why disband now? There is not one specific thing – no particular threat, no health issue, and no big personal issue," he wrote. "The intensity and focus has come at the cost of missing a lot of the rest of the world and the people I care about. I now view Hindenburg as a chapter in my life, not a central thing that defines me."

Source: IFR