View: In India, some mergers and acquisitions are more equal than others
short seller and the Indian market regulator, a completely different controversy is brewing. It involves the country’s second-most-valuable bank, and its plan to swallow up its securities affiliate.
Some shareholders of the brokerage firm, upset over the terms of the buyout, want to know how the Securities and Exchange Board of India allowed the delisting of ICICI Securities Ltd., waiving the regulator’s own rules for compensating minority investors. A company-law tribunal in Mumbai quashed their challenge on Aug. 21 and allowed the deal to proceed. But that isn’t the end of the matter. There is a separate class-action suit before another tribunal in New Delhi. This dispute is also being heard by a higher court in Mumbai, the country’s commercial capital.
The Indian regulator is battling bigger trouble elsewhere. In an Aug. 10 note, Hindenburg Research drew attention to SEBI chief Madhabi Puri Buch’s past personal investments, and her ownership of a consulting outfit, to question the watchdog’s objectivity in probing the Adani Group, the target of the short seller’s original January 2023 report. The infrastructure conglomerate, which suffered a $150 billion drop in its market value in the aftermath of the publication, has strenuously denied the short seller’s claims of stock-price manipulation. The group’s shares have recouped most of their losses. Buch described the allegation of potential conflict as “character assassination” and said that she made all the appropriate disclosures and recusals.
Separately, the
