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The Anil Ambani group, whose shares were hammered on Wednesday, said that an “illegal bear cartel” had caused a market cap loss of about Rs 3 lakh crore for the infrastructure sector over the last few weeks.
“We have written to SEBI, the stock exchanges, and intelligence agencies to immediately investigate these concerted efforts to destabilise the capital markets, and create panic amongst investors,” said Mr Gautam Doshi, Group Managing Director of Reliance-Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (Reliance–ADAG).
According to media reports, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India had sent notices to the auditors of two Reliance-ADAG companies — Reliance Infrastructure and Reliance Natural Resources Ltd (which has now been merged with Reliance Power) — and had also sought clarifications on the SEBI order passed in mid-January 2011. ICAI had also allegedly asked the companies to submit their audited financial reports for three financial years starting from 2006-07.
In response to this, Mr Doshi said Reliance Infrastructure had not received any queries from ICAI on its accounts for any year. “ICAI has simply asked for copies of audited balance sheets, which are already in the public domain and have been circulated to over 1.5 million shareholders,” Mr Doshi said.
The accounting regulator had also reportedly asked about Reliance Infrastructure's policy of rotating auditors. With regard to this matter, Mr Doshi said, “It has been explained to ICAI that this policy, voluntarily adopted by Reliance Infra, is recommended by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. The policy is entirely in line with international best practice.”
He also said the statutory auditors of Reliance Infrastructure had not received any queries on this matter from ICAI. “In any case, Reliance Infra will continue to extend all co-operation to ICAI and respond to any queries, if and when raised. At the same time, we would urge discretion to be maintained by a professional body like ICAI, especially in relation to price-sensitive comments and observations to the media,” he added.
Reliance ADAG stocks, which lost heavily on Wednesday, recovered a bit on Thursday, with scrips of four of the six companies closing in the green. Of the group stocks, Reliance Infrastructure, which suffered the most on Wednesday, saw the highest increase of 9.45 per cent on Thursday on the BSE. Reliance Mediaworks rose 4.97 per cent, Reliance Capital by 1.53 per cent and Reliance Communications by 1.79 per cent.
The two stocks that closed in the red were Reliance Power, which fell 0.44 per cent, and Reliance Broadcast Network, which was down 0.64 per cent.
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