Investing.com– Gautam Adani, Chair of the eponymous Indian conglomerate, was indicted with seven other men by a New York court on Wednesday on charges of a massive bribery scheme and for allegedly misleading investors. 

Adani, who is among the world’s richest men, was accused of having paid Indian government officials over $250 million in bribes to obtain solar energy supply contracts that were expected to generate over $2 billion in profits. 

The bribes were paid between 2020 and 2024- a period that was also marked by a sharp increase in Adani’s wealth.

Shares of firms under the Adani Group- which include Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd (NS:APSE) and Adani Enterprises Ltd (NS:ADEL)- had also risen sharply in valuation over the past four years. Adani Enterprises is the flagship company of the conglomerate.

The allegations come more than a year after short seller Hindenburg Research leveled allegations of fraud and market manipulation against the conglomerate. The Hindenburg report had sparked investigations by Indian and U.S. authorities, although Adani faced little scrutiny in India. 

Hindenburg alleged that India’s securities regulator also had ties to Adani. 

Wednesday’s indictment was announced by the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of New York. 

“The defendants orchestrated an elaborate scheme to bribe Indian government officials to secure contracts worth billions of dollars and Gautam S. Adani, Sagar R. Adani and Vneet S. Jaain lied about the bribery scheme as they sought to raise capital from U.S. and international investors,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement. 

The investigation into Adani involved the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The indictment also alleged that the defendants had attempted to hide the fraud by obstructing the government’s investigation into the case. 

Bloomberg reported that Adani’s units had scrapped a $600 million bond sale after the U.S. charges.

Adani could not be immediately reached for a comment.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) -Dollar bond prices for Adani companies fell sharply in early Asia trade on Thursday after the Indian conglomerate’s billionaire chairman was indicted in New York over allegations of bribery and fraud.

Prices for Adani Port and Special Economic Zone debt maturing in August 2027 fell more than five cents on the dollar, according to LSEG data.

Adani Electricity Mumbai debt maturing in February 2030 fell nearly eight cents and dollar bonds issued by Adani Transmission also notched falls larger than five cents to trade just above 80 cents.

The price falls were the biggest since February 2023 when short-seller Hindenburg Research published a negative report, questioning the group’s debt levels and use of tax havens.

U.S. authorities said on Wednesday that Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani and seven other defendants agreed to pay about $265 million in bribes to Indian government officials.

Adani Group did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside business hours in India.

Shares in India-listed Adani companies begin trade at 0345 GMT.

By David Shepardson

(Reuters) – Federal Communications Commission Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said on Wednesday she will step down from the agency that oversees U.S. telecommunications companies on Jan. 20 when Donald Trump assumes the presidency.

Rosenworcel, who joined the FCC (BME:FCC) in 2012 and is the first female permanent chair, oversaw a dramatic expansion of commission work on space policy including the establishment of a Space Bureau.

She was also behind efforts to help more students get internet access, oversaw a government subsidy program to help 23 million households get broadband access and led an agency crackdown on the proliferation of Chinese telecoms equipment and other national security issues.

Rosenworcel said the job had been the honor of a lifetime, guiding “the FCC during a time when communications technology is a part of every aspect of civic and commercial life.”

She led efforts to restore landmark net neutrality rules that were reversed by the FCC under then President Donald Trump and have since been put on hold by a court.

Net neutrality rules require internet service providers to treat internet data and users equally rather than restricting access, slowing speeds or blocking content for certain users. A federal appeals court in August blocked the FCC from enforcing the rules while an industry legal challenge plays out.

Rosenworcel is following long-standing commission precedent by stepping down when a new president takes office, which will leave the commission divided 2-2 between Democratic and Republican appointees.

This week, Trump named FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, a critic of the Biden administration’s telecom policies and Big Tech, as new chair effective Jan. 20. Trump will need to nominate a replacement for Rosenworcel and win Senate confirmation before Republicans can take full control of the agency.

Rosenworcel was hampered by the fact that the U.S. Senate did not confirm a third Democratic FCC commissioner until September 2023, which prevented the commission from moving ahead on many fronts.

She clashed with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk when the FCC in 2022 rescinded $885.5 million in rural broadband subsidies for SpaceX’s internet satellite constellation Starlink. In September, Rosenworcel said the United States needs more competition for space-based internet.

Investing.com– Coinbase Global Inc (NASDAQ:COIN) fell from a three-year high on Wednesday as filings showed CEO Brian Armstrong sold nearly $300 million worth of shares this week, his second major share sale in November.

Armstrong sold just over 1 million shares on Monday for about $285.6 million, after selling about 300,000 shares last week. The sales were made through the Brian Armstrong Living Trust, SEC filings showed. 

Armstrong’s sales come amid a strong rally in crypto stocks over the past two weeks, as the industry cheered the prospect of friendlier regulations under Donald Trump.

Coinbase surged to a three-year intraday high of $341.75, before settling lower at $320.01 on Wednesday. The stock has nearly doubled in value since Trump’s election win in early-November, and rose marginally in aftermarket trade.

Gains in Coinbase tracked a sharp increase in cryptocurrency prices, with Bitcoin hitting record highs around $95,000 as the prospect of friendlier regulations under Trump sparked heavy buying. 

Increased crypto trade is expected to benefit Coinbase, although the exchange still missed expectations with its earnings for the September quarter. 

Coinbase’s shares are trading up about 103% so far in 2024, with a bulk of gains coming over the past three weeks.

By Abhirup Roy

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Hyundai Motor (OTC:HYMTF) unveiled its first three-row electric SUV on Wednesday, pushing into a market for big family cars that global automakers hope will one day be a profit powerhouse.

Hyundai’s IONIQ 9 will roll out in the United States and Korea early next year with a range of more than 300 miles, the Korean automaker said in a statement. Launches in Europe and other markets will follow, it said.

Three-row SUVs have replaced minivans and station wagons to become the big car of choice for many soccer moms and dads carrying kids and friends around town as well as road trips with lots of passengers and gear.

Most EVs are money-losing. But profits from the gasoline-powered versions promise automakers big payoffs as battery costs decline, and early launches give the brands a headstart in the emerging market segment.

Lucid (NASDAQ:LCID), General Motors (NYSE:GM)’ Cadillac, Volvo (OTC:VLVLY) and Vinfast all are launching three-row EVs, while Hyundai corporate cousin Kia already has its own version.

“It’s a very important segment on the gas side,” said Sam Fiorani, vice president at research firm AutoForecast Solutions. “The problem with it is that they are large vehicles and finding a way to design a battery pack around all the storage and the utility of a three-row takes a concerted effort.”

Moreover, big batteries are not enough to avoid charging during long road trips.

Still, automakers need to get into the three-row SUV market to give loyal customers options, Fiorani said. “If you aren’t in that field where they expect you to be, they’re going to move to somebody else, and it’s much easier to keep a customer happy than to win a customer away from another brand.”

With current incentives, Fiorani forecast that the new models will help to more than double sales of three-row EVs to around 150,000 next year, from an estimated 68,000 this year.

The handful of models in the market with three-row versions includes Rivian (NASDAQ:RIVN)’s R1S, starting at $76,000 and Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA)’s Model X, which starts at $80,000. There is also a Model Y three-row variant.

Lucid started taking orders for its $95,000 Gravity SUV this month and Vietnamese EV maker VinFast (NASDAQ:VFS) on Tuesday started delivering the VF (NYSE:VFC) 9 SUV with a $70,000 starting price.

Hyundai did not disclose a price for the IONIQ 9, but the Kia EV9 starts at $55,000, and models from the related companies are often similarly priced.

Hyundai aims to have a full lineup of 23 EV models by 2030. The IONIQ 9, built in Georgia, will be able to charge from 10% to 80% in 24 minutes at high-capacity charging stations, and it is compatible with Tesla’s Supercharger network.

TEMPERED ESTIMATES

Most automakers are pressing ahead with their plans even as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has promised to pull back government incentives for EVs.

However, Ford (NYSE:F) in August shelved plans to produce an electric three-row SUV, choosing instead to build hybrid SUVs to woo customers with longer-range vehicles for road trips. Rivals are also responding to rising consumer demand for cars with gas-powered engines and a small battery pack as a less expensive way to go electric.

“The whole EV market right now is difficult and (building three-row EVs) is especially difficult because of the higher prices and costs associated with it,” said Jessica Caldwell, head of insights at auto research firm Edmunds. 

The vehicles are part of automakers’ long term strategy to expand EV offerings, but “expectations definitely need to be tempered in terms of volume in this segment,” she said.

The high price and limited range, especially for family road trips, restrict the appeal of such vehicles to early EV adopters, she added.

The target audience of wealthy buyers for three-row SUVs should not be discouraged by Trump’s plans to cut a $7,500 federal tax credit for EV buyers, analysts said, noting that most do not qualify for such subsidies anyway.

Still, it does not help, Caldwell said. “I think it just makes the package seem a lot less attractive.”

By Daniel Trotta

(Reuters) – U.S. law enforcement on Wednesday arrested a homeless Florida man and charged him with plotting to bomb the New York Stock Exchange after an undercover employee recorded him saying, “I feel like Bin Laden,” federal officials allege.

The suspect, Harun Abdul-Malik Yener, took steps to set off a bomb outside the stock exchange on Wall Street in lower Manhattan, according to an FBI affidavit. The affidavit was filed in support of a criminal complaint charging Yener with attempting to damage or destroy a building used in interstate commerce by means of an explosive.

Yener has been assigned a federal public defender in the Southern District of Florida whose office did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for a statement regarding his defense.

Yener’s motives remained unclear. The FBI said that besides making the comment about Osama bin Laden, the former al Qaeda leader and mastermind of the 2001 attacks on the United States, Yener also described an attempt to join right-wing militias and expressed general anti-government sentiment, saying: “This country is due for a revolution.”

The FBI had been investigating the suspect, described as unhoused and living in Coral Gables, Florida, since February after receiving a tip he was storing bomb-making schematics in a storage unit, the FBI said.

FBI agents found bomb-making sketches, timers, circuit boards and other electronics.

In conversations with at least three undercover employees, Yener said setting off an improvised explosive device would lead to a “reboot” or “reset” of the U.S. government.

“The Stock Exchange, we want to hit that, because it will wake people up,” he added, according to the FBI affidavit.

Yener wanted a device powerful enough to blow off the doors so that “anything existing in there will be killed,” Yener told two undercover employees who had told him they had access to commercial-grade explosives, the FBI said.

By Roushni Nair

(Reuters) -Australia’s HMC Capital on Thursday unveiled plans to launch DigiCo REIT, a new digital infrastructure real estate trust focused on data centers, in the country’s largest initial public offering of 2024 valued at A$2.75 billion ($1.8 billion).

Shares in HMC rose as much as 2.2% to a record high of A$11.99 in early trade, compared to a 0.4% jump in the benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index.

HMC is capitalizing on the global surge in data center demand driven by the AI revolution.

DigiCo REIT IPO will surpass both payment services provider Cuscal’s A$337 million offering and Mexican food chain Guzman Y Gomez’s A$335.1 million listing, making it the largest such deal this year in Australia.

The Australian bourse has seen a resurgence in listings this year, rebounding from 2023 which saw the fewest listings in 10 years. The number of new listed entities on the ASX stood at about 77 IPO’s as of Nov. 20, already surpassing about 57 IPO’s seen in fiscal 2023.

HMC, founded by banker-turned-investor David Di Pilla, said strong interest from investors led the expansion of the IPO by A$100 million, with phased trading set to begin on Dec. 12.

DigiCo REIT will manage A$4.3 billion worth of data center assets across the U.S. and Australia, initially anchored by A$2.5 billion worth of strategic operating assets in Australia acquired from Global Switch (NYSE:SWCH) Australia and iseek. According to an earlier HMC filing, iseek will reinvest A$250 million worth of the purchase price into the DigiCo IPO.

After the ASX listing of DigiCo REIT, HMC will hold an 18% stake worth A$500 million and see its assets under management surge by 73% to A$17.5 billion in 2024.

As part of DigiCo REIT’s formation, HMC and DigiCo REIT also secured deals to acquire three North American enterprise and hyperscale data centers for A$1.5 billion, which will be incorporated into DigiCo REIT’s portfolio, the company said.

($1 = 1.5370 Australian dollars)

(Reuters) -Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy said the government efficiency panel that President-elect Donald Trump has named them to lead will follow recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings that they say can be used to take power away from federal agencies and reduce regulations the two call unnecessary, costly and inefficient.

Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) and SpaceX, and Ramaswamy, a former Republican presidential candidate and the founder of biotech firm Roivant Sciences (NASDAQ:ROIV), will head a panel of outside advisers to make recommendations concerning the federal government. They want to greatly reduce the size of the federal workforce and to wipe away many existing regulations.

Given the ambitious claims made by Musk, Ramaswamy and Trump about the panel’s ability to transform the U.S. government, the effort has received widespread publicity and interest in how it will operate.

The two wrote a Wall Street Journal opinion piece about the panel on Wednesday. They said their bid to pull the plug on existing regulations will be guided by a pair of recent U.S. Supreme court rulings that limited the authority of federal regulatory agencies.

In a 2022 decision, the court decided that agencies cannot address “major questions” with broad economic or societal impact without explicit permission from Congress. In a ruling in June, the court overturned its own precedent that had called on courts to defer to an agency’s interpretation of ambiguous laws.

Both decisions have led judges to block or strike down a number of Biden administration rules, including a student debt relief plan and regulations on net neutrality and overtime pay.

Together, the Supreme Court decisions suggest that thousands of other federal rules are invalid, according to Musk and Ramaswamy. They also predicted legal challenges if Trump nullifies existing rules, but said the president has the power to correct overreach by agencies.

With an electoral mandate and the 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, Musk and Ramaswamy said, their panel has an opportunity to enact substantial structural downsizing within the federal government.

William Buzbee, a professor at Georgetown Law who specializes in administrative law, called Musk and Ramaswamy’s interpretation of the recent Supreme Court cases “very confused,” and that neither decision limits agency powers as drastically as they claim.

Trump said last week the panel will issue individual reports on its work and “a big one” at the end, slated for July 4, 2026.

The panel expects that Trump will, “by executive action, immediately pause the enforcement of those regulations and initiate the process for review and rescission.”

Musk and Ramaswamy said they can reduce federal spending by $500 billion by cutting expenditures that have not been authorized by Congress or are being used in ways that Congress did not intend, citing $535 million for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, $1.5 billion for international organizations and nearly $300 million given to groups like Planned Parenthood.

They stated that a partnership with the Trump presidential transition team was underway to hire a team of “small-government crusaders,” which will work with the White House Office of Management and Budget. Trump is due to take office on Jan. 20.

Musk and Ramaswamy also suggested that requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in workers leaving their jobs. Some Republicans want Musk to back requiring all federal workers to work in-person.

U.S. Senator Joni Ernst said on Wednesday she was delivering a roadmap to Trump, Musk and Ramaswamy “on how to end the shenanigans and get the federal workforce back to work.”

Since it was announced last week, the panel has said it wants “high IQ” employees and plans weekly livestreams, according to social media posts by Musk and Ramaswamy.

Buzbee said that Trump had a “great deal of latitude” to order agencies to “go easy on enforcement,” but that there were significant obstacles to the sweeping deregulation described by Musk and Ramaswamy.

Many regulations allow private citizens to bring lawsuits enforcing them, he said – for example, by suing polluters that violate environmental standards. Fully rolling back the regulations is an intensive legal process that will be difficult for agencies if their staffs are suddenly slashed, he said.

The panel is not Trump’s first effort at paring back regulatory agencies.

During his first term, he tried to kill at least 19 agencies, without success. He called for eliminating the Overseas Private Investment Corporation that helps spur private investment in foreign development projects and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. He also tried to cut funding for Amtrak, subsidies for rural airline service and the Special Olympics.

By Lisandra Paraguassu

BRASILIA (Reuters) – China Development Bank signed a deal on Wednesday to loan 5 billion yuan ($690 million) to Brazil’s National Bank for Economic and Social Development BNDES, marking BNDES’s first foreign currency operation.

The deal, announced during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Brasilia on Wednesday, was part of a package of 37 agreements across various sectors that marked increasing cooperation between China and Brazil.

The three-year loan will support a BNDES credit line for projects in different areas, the Brazilian bank said in a statement.

BNDES President Aloizio Mercadante said the bank has been intensifying its international operations to diversify funding and boost project lending in Brazil. He added that the loan in Chinese currency offers Brazilian entrepreneurs, particularly exporters, natural exchange rate protection.

This move is seen as an initial step towards expanding alternatives to the dollar, a key objective discussed within BRICS, the bloc of emerging economies that includes China, Brazil, and eight other nations, since its expansion last year.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been a vocal proponent of creating alternatives to the U.S. dollar for transactions among BRICS countries. At the most recent BRICS summit, Lula emphasized the urgent need for “alternative means of payment for transactions between countries”.

As Brazil assumes the bloc’s presidency, this will be one the main issues to be discussed in the next few months.

($1 = 7.2459 Chinese yuan renminbi)

SEATTLE – Boeing (NYSE:BA) issued lay off notices to 692 workers in Missouri, home to the company’s Defense, Space & Security division, according to a federally-required filing posted on Wednesday, as part of the debt-heavy U.S. planemaker’s plan to cut 17,000 jobs, or 10% of its global workforce. 

Including these layoffs, the company has issued 60-day notices to at least 3,100 U.S. workers in Washington, Oregon, South Carolina and Missouri, according to filings. Nearly 2,200 layoff notices went to workers in Washington and another 220 in South Carolina, the two states where Boeing builds commercial airliners.