Contrary to the common belief, the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) has upped its stake in most Adani Group companies during the March quarter as selloff triggered by Hindenburg Research report corrected their astronomical valuations.

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The insurance behemoth has raised its holdings in four of the six companies that have disclosed their shareholding data for the March quarter.

Interestingly, Adani Green Energy and Adani Total Gas, which lost more than three-fourths of their value following the Hindenburg report have witnessed highest increase by LIC among the group firms. That was followed by Adani Enterprises and Adani Transmission.

While the holding in Adani Green Energy increased from 1.28 percent to 1.36 percent, holding in Adani Total Gas stands at 6.02 percent, against the December end holding of 5.96 percent, exchange filings showed.

While LIC's holding in three group companies - Adani Power, Adani Wilmar and NDTV remained nil or less than 1 percent, ACC, in which it had 6.41 percent stake as of December end is yet to disclose its shareholding data for the March quarter.

Not only LIC, retail investors also joined the party in accumulating Adani Group companies during the correction phase. Eight Adani Group companies saw an increase in retail shareholder stake.

Retail investors bought more shares of NDTV, Ambuja Cements and Adani Enterprises in the three months through March, according to shareholding data sourced from BSE.

According to market participants, LIC generally adopts a 'contrarian' investment strategy i.e. when the general mood is bullish, the insurance behemoth books profits whereas it 'buys' when the market sentiment is bearish.

There also came a point where LIC's investments in the Adani Group companies had turned loss-making.

The epic meltdown in shares of Adani-linked companies had seen its market valuation slipping below Rs 7 lakh core, before the US-based GQG Partners purchased minority stake in four firms for Rs 15,450 crore.

Also Read: LIC meets top management of Adani Group, more confident of business prospects: Chairperson MR Kumar

(Edited by : Hormaz Fatakia)