The journey of Gautam Adani, a small-time importer of plastics granules into India in the 1980s, had begun along the coast of Gujarat — in a swamp he would go on to turn into the country’s largest trading outpost. And now, with his fortune back home under attack from a New York-based short seller, the tycoon posed for cameras with Benjamin Netanyahu in the Haifa Port, which he had come to buy for $1.2 billion.
To bondholders, there’s a symbolism in the beleaguered billionaire’s Jan. 31 photo-op with the Israeli prime minister. The ambition that had propelled his odyssey from the Gulf of Kutch 25 years earlier was intact as he stood on the edges of the Mediterranean. But did he still have the ability to keep it all together?
