This Mogul Lost Tens of Billions of Dollars in Days. What Happened?

Louis Vuitton. Tesla. Amazon. The businesses behind the richest people in the world need no introduction. But last year, a name that does not command the same global recognition joined this rarefied list.

The new entrant was the Adani Group, an Indian conglomerate that controls ports, coal mines, food businesses, airports and more. The group’s astronomical rise had given Gautam Adani, its politically connected founder, a fortune of nearly $120 billion, according to Bloomberg, putting him in the company of Bernard Arnault, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

Mr. Adani’s time in that echelon did not last long. Even though he remains enormously wealthy, on paper Mr. Adani has lost half of his wealth, or about $60 billion, in just over a week. And he is facing perhaps the biggest challenge of his career.

Last week, Hindenburg Research, a small investment firm in New York, accused Mr. Adani’s company of “brazen accounting fraud, stock manipulation and money laundering.” The Adani Group has rejected the claims from Hindenburg, which stands to profit if the conglomerate’s shares fall.

On Tuesday Adani Enterprises, Mr. Adani’s flagship company, raised $2.5 billion by selling new shares to investors, a move in the works before Hindenburg’s report. The sale provided a brief respite from the bad news, and then shares of his companies resumed their descent the next day. The stock of Adani Enterprises sank far below the price range set for investors in the new share offer.

In a surprise move on Wednesday, Adani Enterprises reversed course and said it was scrapping the offering, citing “market volatility.” It said in a statement that it wanted to “protect the interest of its investing community” and would return the money.