Anil Ambani: Following a four-day suspension Reliance Infra resumes trading; shares plummet by 5%

Anil Ambani: Reliance Infrastructure Ltd. (NSE: RELINFRA) shares were suspended for four days, which made investors nervous, but they started trading again today.

The stock began at ₹164.54, down ₹8.66, or about 5%, from the previous session. Reliance Infrastructure has shown great short-term momentum, rising almost 27% in the last week despite the trading restrictions. The long-term outlook is still difficult, however. The stock has lost around 40% of its value in the last year, which is indicative of the Anil Ambani-led group’s continued financial difficulties and market concerns. The stock, which was formerly a four-digit heavyweight, has earlier fallen to distressed levels before partially recovering to around ₹173.20.

Reliance Infrastructure’s stock has increased by almost 497% in the last five years. The stock has a 52-week high of Rs 425 and a 52-week low of Rs 127.95. As part of a money-laundering investigation into a suspected ₹17,000-crore bank fraud case, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had already frozen assets connected to the Reliance Group valued at around ₹8,997 crore. Even though the ED has questioned Anil Ambani in the past, group entities have repeatedly maintained that he is not engaged in day-to-day operations. As part of the investigation, the ED had already questioned the industrialist. On Wednesday, the Bombay High Court gave businessman Anil Ambani temporary respite by halting three banks’ coercive effort to declare his firms’ finances to be “fraud” based on a forensic audit report (FAR) until October 2020. Ambani’s claim that the report, which was created by external auditor BDO India LLP, could not be trusted because it was not signed by a properly trained chartered accountant as required by the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Master Directions was accepted by a single-judge panel of Justice Milind Jadhav.

According to a forensic audit report by BDO India LLP from October 2020, the case concerns three banks that had sent Ambani show-cause notices under the FAR for labeling the loan accounts of his companies, Reliance Communications Ltd (RCom), Reliance Telecom Limited (RTL), and Reliance Infratel Limited (RITL), as “fraud.” The Indian Overseas Bank, IDBI Bank, and Bank of Baroda were the targets of three different lawsuits brought by Ambani, the former non-executive director of RCom, asking the high court to stop the banks from responding to show-cause notifications sent to him between January and December 2024. Ambani requested a halt to the notifications and other coercive measures as a temporary remedy. He said that SBI had not nominated a chartered accountant who was registered with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India as the signatory of BDO India LLP. Therefore, in accordance with the RBI’s Revised Master Direction, the company was not authorized to conduct the audit.