Gautam Adani (photo: official website, Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository)
rich people's problems
Not long ago he still managed to purchase the port of Haifa, and now it seems that his ship is sinking.
The Indian billionaire Gautam Adani is in trouble: a severe report published by the American short list company Hindburg on the Adani Group, which he owns, stated that the group "has been engaged in blatant manipulation of shares and falsification of registers for decades".
Far reaching effect
According to CNN, since the publication of the report, investors have fled and the Adani Group has lost more than $90 billion of its value. Adani's response to the report did not include answers to Hindenburg's serious claims.
Instead, he pulled the discussion into the geopolitical realm and claimed that "not only is this an unjust attack on a specific company, but it is a calculated attack on India."
Apparently, Adani did not answer the allegations in a matter-of-fact manner, but his attempt to drag the discourse in a patriotic and national direction is not accidental.
After years of British colonialism, Adani believes he has a chance to rally Indian public opinion in his favor in this case.
He may also expect support from other anti-Western elements.
At the end of the day, the one who until recently held the title of "Asia's Richest Man" now understands the importance of image and public opinion.
And if this scenario of a billionaire whose business crashes due to negative publicity in the media sounds familiar to you, it's no accident.
The big FTX scam
Reot Goldman (Photo: GEOMETRIX)
It was recently published in Forbes magazine that the crashing crypto company FTX owes money to all the major technology companies and social networks: Google, Meta (Facebook), Amazon Apple, Twitter and more.
As you may recall, FTX crashed after an investigation published on it by CoinDesk magazine revealed that the capital of FTX's sister company, Alameda, comes mainly from coins that FTX itself issues and not from independent assets.
That is, FTX issued its own virtual currencies and flowed them to the sister company.
This is similar to a bank that prints money and flows it into its assets.
The aforementioned investigation led to the downfall of FTX.
Investors in the company who did not manage to withdraw the money in time lost the entire investment, and the owner of the company, Sam Bankman Fried, lost 94 percent of the value of his shares in one day.
This is, of course, the least of his troubles.
Two months ago, the man who drew "flattering" comparisons to the swindler Bernie Madoff, was arrested in the Bahamas and is expected to be extradited to America, where he faces many years in prison.
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The power of image
The cases of FTX and the Adani Group teach us that image is perhaps the most important thing for a company.
No matter how many resources a company has, and how good its product is, as soon as the image is damaged, both investors and customers flee, and this has serious consequences. As evidence, just recently we saw Castro's stock crash after its inventory liquidation operation got out of proportion.
The enormous importance of image is the reason why luxury fashion companies invest more money in advertising campaigns than in the production of the product itself.
She also explains why a company like Coca-Cola, which already dominates the Israeli market, advertises here in massive amounts, and why even the Electric Company, which is a monopoly owned by the state, buys advertising time on commercial channels and invests in campaigns.
This is also true in a field such as high-tech and startups.
Although the sharp minds, the quality of management, the level of innovation and the quality of the product are important.
But in the end, without the right image it is not possible to raise investments that will allow the entrepreneurs to develop the product.
In conclusion
In the world we live in today, when we all consume media and news with a click on a mobile phone or through the television, one negative advertisement that resonates is enough to bring down huge companies.
The recent shocking events of the Adani Group and the FTX Company teach us that what was true in the time of the Bible is also true today: "A good name is good from a good oil." Reut
Goldman is the CEO of the Geomatrix Group, a member of the "Helsinki" committee at Blinson Hospital, and a member of the board of directors In the Schneider Children's Hospital Trustee Association.
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