The very public tormentor of India’s Adani and Switzerland’s Temenos calls it a day. 

It was almost beginning to be fun - the overnight email wafting down through cyberspace into an Asia Pacific time zone. 

The frenzied reaction and the vacuous sound of a share price crashing through erstwhile very rational support levels. Indignant executives and owners caught with their pants down or, worse, siphoning assets In Flagranti during the figurative light of day from publicly listed company coffers.

Decision to Disband

But all that is apparently no more. Hindenburg Research, the US short-seller famous for tormenting the likes of Indian billionaire Gautam Adani and Geneva-based software specialist Temenos, as finews.asia has extensively reported and commented on, is calling it a day.

An emailed note from the founder, Nate Anderson, said that he had decided to disband the company last year and had been sharing the decision with family, friends, and his team.

World Class Work

In the message, he discussed his unconventional start and how he built up a team of 11 individuals, mentioning that they didn’t come from traditional finance backgrounds.

«But when it comes to this field, they are ruthless assassins, capable of world-class work,» Anderson indicated.

Costs of Success

He attributes his current decision to take things offline to no one «specific thing» but that making it successful came at a cost.

«The intensity and focus has come at the cost of missing a lot of the rest of the world and the people I care about. I now view Hindenburg as a chapter in my life, not a central thing that defines me,» he maintained.

Open Source

Over the next six months, however, as things wind down, Anderson intends to share Hindenburg’s process by working on a series of materials and videos that would «open-source every aspect of our model and how we conduct our investigations».

«My hope is that after we fully share our process, in a couple years I will get an unsolicited message from someone who reads this (maybe you), who embraces the same passion, learns the craft, and finds the confidence to shed some light on a subject that needs it, despite the obstacles in your way,» he said.

Relief Rally

One of the first visible impacts of the unexpected decision was a roughly 9 percent rise in Adani shares on Thursday.

It is clearly a temporary relief rally that is likely to again elicit comments in India about the seriousness of the original accusations. 

Trump 2.0

But the truth is that the buck has been passed on, at least for now, as US prosecutors in New York have leveled an indictment against the billionaire for bribery and fraud and the political opposition in India has called for his arrest, as a November report from «BBC» indicates.

Moreover, there has been a great deal of political posturing in the US and India related to what is going on and there may be some behind-the-scenes jostling given a very public congratulations on X by Adani himself when Donald Trump was re-elected.

Lawfare

Given that, the best thing that Adani can hope for is that the incoming administration deems the charges a case of «lawfare», a term that has been liberally thrown around in recent weeks by Trump appointees.

But, in the longer term, many of the original questions will have to be convincingly answered, maybe in part by someone who takes up Anderson's message to heart, pays close attention to the material and videos, and takes up the baton Hindenburg is so clearly leaving behind.