Meet Amrita Ahuja, Harvard, LSE alumni CFO of Rs 3 lakh crore firm Block targeted by Hindenburg after Adani

Hindenburg Research on Thursday reported trading activity in Block Inc formerly known as Square Inc and argued that the financial startup controlled by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey misrepresented its user numbers and underestimated its customer acquisition prices. The finance director of Block Inc, Amrita Ahuja, allegedly dumped millions of dollars' worth of stock, according to Hindenburg Research.

Who is Amrita Ahuja?

Amrita Ahuja's parents are Indian immigrants who operated a daycare facility in a Cleveland suburb, according to Wall Street Journal. In 2000, she earned her degree from London School of Economics and Political Science in Economics. From 2005 to 2007, she acquired MBA degree from Harvard Business School.

According to her Linkedin page, she is with Block Inc for over four years now. She is the current chief operating officer of Block, a company worth Rs 3 lakh crore. Amrita Ahuja claimed that Square's emphasis on assisting small-business entrepreneurs like her parents was what drew her to the company.

She has previously held positions in strategy and finance at Walt Disney Co., the former Fox division of News Corp., and Activision Blizzard Inc. She contributed to the start of the Hulu streaming platform while at Fox.

At Activision Blizzard, producer of “Call of Duty,” “Candy Crush” and “World of Warcraft,” she oversaw the gaming business shift its business concept from one driven by in-store purchases around the festive seasons to just one represented by an online gaming experience.

During Amrita Ahuja’s tenure at Square, the project has supported small-business customers gain online marketplaces to constitute for the loss in traffic generated by the global pandemic.

Hindenburg Research's allegations

According to the US short-research, seller's former Block employees believed that 40% to 75% of the accounts they assessed were fraudulent, phoney, or extra accounts connected to a single person. Shares of Block dropped 20% to $58.39 in morning trading on the story. If losses remain during the session, the stock could experience its largest percentage fall since March 2020.

The move is perceived as a threat to Dorsey, who is the company's top stakeholder with a stake of about 8% and co-founded Block in 2009 in his San Francisco apartment with the purpose of reshaping the credit card business.