McKenna gets the last word on Adani’s many auditors
I love the fact Bloomberg Jakarta is digging into the Adani audit firms.
On June 22, Anders Melin and Anto Antony at Bloomberg in Jakarta published, “Hindenburg’s Adani Strike Adds Pressure on India’s Already Wary Auditors,” a story with a strong focus on the impact of a devastating report by Hindenburg Research on January 24 on the myriad of audit firms serving Indian conglomerate Adani.
I’ve been talking to Melin about going deeper on the audit firms, plural, angle for a while. He and Antony smartly waited and did some more really great reporting, and then used the news hook of the May 30 issuance of a rare “qualified opinion” by Indian Deloitte network member firm Deloitte Haskins & Sells for one of the Adani business units, Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone to motivate the story.
Deloitte said it could not confirm that certain material transactions that the Hindenburg Research report said raised red flags were with unrelated parties. Deloitte emphasized its limited scope, noting it’s not the statutory auditor for most Adani Group companies. Adani uses more than 40 audit firms to write opinions for more than 400 legal entities.
Adani also refused to order an independent investigation of the relationships questioned by Deloitte, because it said India’s securities regulator was already investigating Hindenburg’s allegations. That response, whether from Adani or the auditor, would not cut it if Adani was listed on a U.S. stock exchange.