Madhabi Puri Buch’s Sebi tenure: A legacy of reform, controversy, and resistance
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. In August 2024, Madhabi Puri Buch, then-chairperson of India’s market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), was on a long-overdue vacation in Turkey when a crisis erupted. Hindenburg Research, the now-defunct US short seller, alleged that Sebi’s probe into its January 2023 reporton the Adani Group was compromised.
The firm claimed that Buch had stakes in offshore entities linked to Adani’s alleged stock manipulation and accused her of a conflict of interest stemming from her ownership of consulting firms. Read this | To whom is Madhabi Puri Buch really accountable? Buch wasted no time. From Turkey, she worked with colleagues in India to formulate Sebi’s response, as her deputies scrambled to contain the fallout in Mumbai.
The incident offered a glimpse into the latter half of her tenure—marked by both regulatory ambition and relentless controversy. Appointed in March 2022, Buch was a first in many ways: Sebi’s first woman chairperson, its first leader from the private sector, and its first chief in decades without a government background. Her career spanned three decades, including stints at ICICI Bank, private equity, and the New Development Bank in Shanghai.
Yet, her tenure, which ended on 28 February, was dogged by allegations that tested Sebi’s credibility. The Adani-Hindenburg episode was a defining flashpoint, with critics accusing Sebi of slow and ineffective oversight. While Buch denied any conflict of interest, the scrutiny over Sebi’s regulatory lapses lingered, eroding investor confidence.
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