This page is updated regularly with the latest news about why Adani’s biggest investors must cut all ties with Adani.

Context

Coal giant Adani is planning to develop more new coal than any other private company in the world. In Australia, Adani are trying to dig the biggest coal mine on the land of the Wangan and Jagalingou people - who have never given their free, prior and informed consent to the project. In India, Adani has bought at least 8 new coal mines since 2020, and is planning new coal-burning power stations and a highly-polluting coal-to-plastics plant. 

To make matters worse, Adani has been accused of pulling “the largest con in corporate history” in a damning report presenting detailed evidence of “brazen accounting fraud, stock manipulation and money laundering” over many decades. 

As the Hindenburg Report demonstrates, Adani moves money around its vast corporate empire so that any investment in any Adani company could end up financing Adani’s dirty coal projects, including the Carmichael mine. Any company that invests in any Adani Group company is complicit in Adani's coal expansion and violation of Indigenous land rights. 

Demands

The #StopAdani movement's demands of Adani's investors are that they:

1. Divest from all Adani Group companies, and;
2. Rule out any further investment or arrangement of finance until Adani abandons its Carmichael Coal Project

Already Happening

Major investors are aleady pulling their money out of Adani because of climate, human rights and governance concerns. These include:

1. Carnegie, June 2020, “An example of a company that has been avoided for environmental reasons is Adani Ports”. Source
2. Danske Bank, September 2020, Restrictions prohibiting investment in Adani Ports and Adani’s North Queensland Export Terminal due to the company’s “climate change contribution and harmful environmental practices”. Source
3. SPP, January 2021, “The following companies are excluded from all SPP Fonder’s funds in agreement with SPP’s sustainability criteria – Serious environmental and climate damage”. List includes Adani Ports. Source
4. PIMCO, March 2021, PIMCO banned future investment in Adani Ports bonds and clarified that it did not participate in the January 2021 bond issue, due to links to the Carmichael coal project. Source
5. SwedBank, April 2021, Excluded Adani Ports due to its connection to fossil fuels. Source
6. Samsung Asset Management, June 2021 "the fund no longer owns Adani Ports shares and has no plan to repurchase the shares. Overall, Samsung Asset Management clearly has no intention to support Adani’s coal project” Source
7. Storebrand, June 2021, stated it had dumped its Adani Ports shares due to “our sustainability criteria related to coal" Source
8. Norges, January 2023, reduced its exposure by $600M in the wake of Hindenburg's fraud allegations. In February it divested its remaining exposure. Source
9. Credit Suisse, February 2023, stopped accepting Adani bonds as collateral in the wake of Hindenburg's fraud allegations. Source
10. Citi, February 2023, stopped accepting Adani bonds as collateral in the wake of Hindenburg's fraud allegations. Source
11. Standard Chartered, February 2023, stopped accepting Adani bonds as collateral in the wake of Hindenburg's fraud allegations. Source
12. KLP, February 2023, divested from Adani Green, citing concerns its money for green investments could be siphoned into coal mining. Source
13. PFA, February 2023, Denmark’s largest commercial pension PFA fund sold off  their holdings due to concerns their Adani Green Energy investments could be funding coal. Source

Key Updates

Hindenburg Research accuses Adani Group of “pulling the largest con in corporate history”

• On January 24th Hindenburg Research released a bombshell report titled “Adani Group: How the world’s 3rd richest man is pulling the largest con in corporate history.” The 106-page report was the result of a two-year forensic investigation into Adani’s finances and corporate governance that laid out detailed and damning evidence of “brazen accounting fraud, stock manipulation and money laundering…taking place over the course of decades.” The report came just days before Adani Enterprises was due to launch a US$2.5billion share sale for its pipeline of projects, which includes the Carmichael coal mine in Australia, proposed coal mines in India and a mega proposed coal-to-plastics plant. 
  

Coal and Climate Change:

• Research from Market Forces, based on data compiled from Adani’s own corporate records, shows Adani’s investors are enabling a catastrophic fossil fuel expansion by supporting Adani. It comes as Adani is ramping up greenwashing efforts, even launching a website called iCan which asks children to submit ideas to 'take individual responsibility' to solve the climate crisis. Several publications including Bloomberg noted that the data undermines Adani's hollow claims about being a company in transition. Adani's plans include:
   
  • Doubling its coal power generation, from 12 to 24 gigawatts (GW) through 6 new coal power stations and expansions, giving it more coal power capacity than all of Australia,
  • Adding and enabling an extra 132 million tonnes per annum of new thermal coal mining capacity, including the 60 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) Carmichael project,
  • New coal and LNG terminals at Adani ports,
  • A highly polluting coal-to-plastics plant that would use 3.1mtpa of imported coal, including 1mtpa of thermal coal.

Violating Human Rights:

• Adani bulldozed and blew up a highly significant sacred site containing thousands of Wangan and Jagalingou artefacts, despite strong objections from Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners.  Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owner Lyndell Turbane said, "It's bad enough that we've been removed from our land, now they're continuing to destroy our cultural history."
  
  Wangan and Jagalingou Cultural Custodians, who have never consented to Adani’s mine on their ancestral lands, have held an ongoing cultural ceremony at Adani’s mine site for over 500 days and have said they will not leave until Adani leaves.

Latest Updates

February 2023

• On January 24th Hindenburg Research released a bombshell report titled “Adani Group: How the world’s 3rd richest man is pulling the largest con in corporate history.” The 106-page report was the result of a two-year forensic investigation into Adani’s finances and corporate governance that laid out detailed and damning evidence of “brazen accounting fraud, stock manipulation and money laundering…taking place over the course of decades.” The report came just days before Adani Enterprises was due to launch a US$2.4billion share sale for its pipeline of projects, which includes the Carmichael coal mine in Australia, proposed coal mines in India and a mega proposed coal-to-plastics plant. 
  
  
• Adani stocks plummeted in the weeks after the Hindenburg Report's release, with the Adani Group losing over $100billion USD ($159B AUD), with companies down 10-30%, and USD bonds down .7c with rampant selling. Gautam Adani dropped out of Bloomberg’s top 10 rich list. Investors including Barclays, Deutsche Bank, MUFG and Standard Chartered held emergency calls with Adani.
  
  

• Adani Enterprises went ahead with a US$2.4 billion share offering, which was intended to diversify investors, attract more retail investors to the group and raise finance for a pipeline of projects. Adani only made it over the finish line by allegedly calling in favours from their friends. Adani announced it a success.
  
  
• Then on February 1 Adani cancelled the fundraising drive after allegations emerged that Adani had used some of the same shell companies exposed in the Hindenburg Report to prop up its own share offer. Now, the Indian regulator SEBI is investigating irregularities with the share offer.
  
  
• Trust in the Adani Group has been seriously eroded. Most recently, Standard Chartered and Credit Suisse has stopped accepting Adani bonds as collateral, Citigroup stopped margin loans on all Adani securities and Norway’s KLP has walked away from Adani Green over concerns it could be funding coal. Alongside that, the Bangladeshi government announced they will seek a revised contract with Adani over the new Godda coal plant due to start importing coal at full capacity to Bangladesh in March. The S&P Dow Jones has now removed Adani Enterprises from their sustainability indices and the pressure is building on Adani to pre-pay debts.
  
  
• On February 10 a public filing revealed Adani is using shares from Adani Green and other companies as collateral for a State Bank of India loan to the Carmichael coal project, sparking off another wave of investor concern. Denmark's largest pension fund PFA sold off their holdings in Adani Green. An analyst at Mellemfolkeligt Samvirke said, "It is a completely unnecessary risk for both the climate and the economy to have investments in this company. We clearly believe that you should sell off investments in Adani Green Energy if you want to have credibility in your green investment products."
  
  https://www.facebook.com/stopadani/videos/159858640239237/ 
  
  
• Adani changed its definition of cash and cash equivalents in recent filings - raising investor concerns about Adani's ability to meet its financial obligations.
  
  
• Wikipedia staff revealed Adani had employed undeclared paid editors to write and sanitise Wikipedia pages related to Adani companies and Adani family members.

August 2022

• Deutsche Bank given legal advice warning its investments in Adani and Whitehaven Coal could breach its own climate policies.
  
  Market Forces has sent legal advice from German law firm Rechtsanwalte Gunther to Deutsche Bank, and the bank’s largest 50 shareholders, that concludes offering additional finance to either Whitehaven or Adani exposes it to legal challenges from multiple angles.

March 2022

• A new Moody’s report on Adani’s North Queensland Export Terminal (NQXT) confirmed Adani is using its investors’ money to pay debt on essential infrastructure for its Carmichael mine. NQXT is the coal port from which all coal from Adani’s Carmichael coal mine will be shipped through the Great Barrier Reef, making it an integral part of the Carmichael coal project. Adani is struggling to find an external source to refinance US$500M of bonds in NQXT that are maturing in December, 2022. Adani told Moody’s it is planning to refinance the debt from within the Adani corporate structure, meaning that any finance or investment in The Adani Group could free up capital for the Carmichael mine and its essential infrastructure.
  
  In its review, Moody’s maintained the status of the bond at Ba2, which is considered a junk bond, and said NQXT has a ‘negative outlook’. Factors cited by Moody’s as contributing to the negative outlook included the terminal’s growing exposure to coal, and “the remaining degree of uncertainty around the execution of the refinancing plan and future capital structure of the terminal." Moody’s noted NQXT’s credit profile will be increasingly subject to ESG risks as production ramps up at Carmichael.
  
  Standard and Poor’s revised their assessment of the port’s liquidity from adequate to less than adequate and said "the refinancing risks associated with the project remain high."
  
  
• Two of Adani’s customers at its North Queensland Export Terminal are taking Adani back to the High Court over claims that Adani engaged in “unconscionable conduct” and dishonest behaviour to exploit its customers, raising further doubts about the long-term viability of Adani’s coal port as it struggles to refinance a US$500M debt bill.
  
  
• Adani Enterprises purchased another two coal mining blocks in India, containing total reserves of over 550 million tonnes of coal. Adani Enterprises have purchased at least 8 new coal blocks since 2020, undermining the company’s ludicrous claims of being a company in transition.

January 2022

• Adani Ports was removed from the UN’s Race to Zero because of the company’s heavy exposure to fossil fuels, and links to the Carmichael coal project.

December 2021

• Adani Ports’ efforts to greenwash its image faced another setback when it was removed from the Business Ambition for 1.5C campaign run by the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi). A spokesperson for CDP, one of the partners that runs the SBTi said, “Adani Ports was removed from the campaign in Oct 2021 following a review of companies with close links to fossil fuel interests in Business Ambition for 1.5C and Race to Zero”.

November 2021

• Adani Ports was removed from four MSCI climate indexes after its links to the Carmichael coal project escalated its controversy score to “severe”. This is not the first time Adani Ports has been removed from an ESG index, with S&P removing it from the Dow Jones Sustainability Index in April 2021, due to its business links with the Myanmar Military and State Street excluding it and Adani Enterprises from some MSCI produced ESG indices it uses.
  
  
• US bank BNY Mellon pulled out of providing finance to Adani’s Carmichael Coal Project and ruled out any further business with Adani in Australia, becoming the 104th major business to say No to Adani’s coal mine. BNY Mellon said Adani’s business “is not aligned with our ESG [environmental, social and governance] principles.”
  
  
• The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) criticised BlackRock’s $1.2 billion investment in the Adani Group as a glaring inconsistency in its commitment to climate action and called for BlackRock to completely divest from all Adani Group companies. IEEFA said, “This conglomerate is possibly the largest single private developer of new coal globally… BlackRock argues that investing in one subsidiary is not the same as investing in another subsidiary. This is fallacious thinking when it comes to a family controlled conglomerate that has intercompany transfers as standard operating procedure. BlackRock must call out and divest global laggards at the group level, for both debt and equity exposures, not just at a subsidiary level. Hiding behind the passive excuse is greenwash, and action on changing indexes is overdue.”
  
  
• London’s Science Museum faced a severe backlash over its sponsorship deal with Adani, leading to protests and several high profile resignations. Indigenous leaders from Australia, India and Indonesia accused the Museum of legitimising Adani’s “destructive coal expansion activities”. Over 40 senior scientists and academics signed an open letter vowing not to work with the museum while it accepted money from fossil fuel giants, saying, “We are in a climate crisis and should not be doing anything to legitimise those companies that are still driving up emissions by exploring for and extracting new sources of fossil fuels when the science is clear that we need to be leaving them in the ground.”

August 2021

• Adani's most recent annual reports confirmed Adani is propping up its Australian coal operations with massive inter-company loans. The two main Adani Australian subsidiaries responsible for the Carmichael Mine and Rail Projects borrowed over AU$4 billion from other Adani Group companies in the last year. As detailed in the excerpts below, AU$1.31 billion of the loans were interest bearing and denominated in US dollars and Euros - suggesting this money has come from loans from external lenders that Adani has subsequently directed into the Carmichael Coal Project.  Anyone investing in any Adani company is at risk of funding Adani’s Carmichael Coal Mine and Rail Project.
  
  
  
• Adani purchased another 3 coal mining blocks and another coal-fired power station in India, adding to its already massive coal expansion plans. Adani has been the most aggressive bidder in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s auction of new coal blocks - undermining Adani’s nonsensical claims about being a company in transition.
  
  
• Ratings agency Moody’s downgraded the outlook of Adani’s North Queensland Export Terminal (formerly Abbot Point) to negative due to environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors. Moody’s said the change to the outlook was particularly due to the “rising refinancing risk” associated with the coal terminal’s US$500 million bond which matures in December 2022. “Refinance risk is being heightened by reduced appetite from creditors for coal investments due to ESG considerations,” it stated.
  
  
• Journalists revealed that some of Adani's biggest shareholders are, in fact, four obscure and opaque funds in Mauritius - a notorious tax haven - each with a sordid history of investing in firms that have defaulted, or been probed for serious financial crimes. Share prices of Adani Group companies plummeted after media reported that the accounts of three of these offshore investors had been frozen. Opposition parties have called for a government probe into the offshore funds to find out if they are being used as a shell for Adani’s own money.
  

July 2021

• Queensland Police have made a "public statement of regret" to Wangan and Jagalingou cultural leader Adrian Burragubba after Mr Burragubba made a complaint to the Queensland Human Rights Commission about being removed from his traditional lands by police at Adani's request. The police statement acknowledged Mr Burragubba represents the Wangan and Jagalingou “aggrieved by Adani’s occupation of the land” and that the incident "was traumatic for Mr Burragubba and his extended family, and caused embarrassment, hurt and humiliation."
  
  This incident comes after Adani attempted to bury an RMIT study that found the company had violated international human rights law in its interactions with the Wangan and Jagalingou - who have never give their free, prior, and informed consent to Adani's mine. The study recommended that mine construction be suspended until the Wangan and Jagalingou give their consent. The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has also requested Adani’s mine be suspended because of its potential violation of Indigenous rights. 
  
  
• A massive drop in aquifers near Adani’s mine has raised concerns that Adani’s water take may have already locked in irreversible damage to the Doongmabulla Springs - the most sacred cultural site of the Wangan and Jagalingou. Cultural leader Adrian Burragubba said “It will be a catastrophe every bit as destructive to our culture, and as hurtful to our people, as the blasting of the caves at the Juukan Gorge”. Wangan and Jagalingou are demanding an immediate stop to Adani’s mine and are considering legal action to stop Adani and protect the springs.
  
• A new report from the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) has found that new coal-fired power stations in India carry a massive risk of becoming stranded assets, due in part to the plummeting cost of renewables making coal projects increasingly unviable. This is a major risk for Adani’s investors as Adani is planning to significantly increase its fleet of coal-fired power stations in India. Adani has 6 new coal stations and expansions planned or under construction that will effectively double its current coal power capacity, and even purchased another 1,200MW coal station in June this year. Adani’s investors could see their money pumped into risky stranded assets if they continue to support Adani.
  
  
• Financial advisory firm Glass Lewis has warned shareholders that Adani has a “severe” risk of material financial impacts driven by ESG factors, and raised concerns about Adani pursuing the “globally unpopular Carmichael Mine”.

April 2021

• Adani Ports was removed from the Dow Jones Sustainability Index over its business ties to the Myanmar military.  In March a report by the Australian Centre for International Justice (ACIJ) and Justice For Myanmar (JFM) exposed Adani Ports’ deepening ties with the Myanmar military, despite the escalating human rights crisis in Myanmar after the military led a violent coup on 1 February toppling the democratically elected civilian government. Adani Ports has partnered with the Myanmar military-owned company Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC) to build a port in Yangon, and paid the MEC tens of millions of dollars. Adani Ports ‘categorically denied’ engaging with Myanmar military leadership before photo and video evidence emerged of Adani Ports’ CEO Karan Adani meeting with sanctioned senior military general Min Aung Hlaing, an accused war criminal, and exchanging gifts.
  
  The UN Independent Fact-Finding Mission Report in 2019 warned investments in companies who partner with the Myanmar Economic Corporation can help finance the Myanmar military. Adani Ports investors and bond arrangers must immediately divest from Adani Ports or risk being complicit in grave human rights abuses.