Question

Mr. Aditya Gupta was the chairman of ‘Vandan Bank’. The Bank was earning good profits. Shareholders were happy as the bank was paying regular dividends. The market price of their shares was also steadily rising. The bank announced taking over of ‘Karur Bank’. Aditya Gupta knew that the share price of Vandan Bank would rise on this announcement. Being a part of the bank, he was not allowed to buy shares of the bank. He called one of his rich friends Nimesh and asked him to invest Rs 6 crores in the shares of his bank promising him the capital gain.

As expected, the share prices went up by 40% and the market price of Nimesh’s shares was now Rs 8.4 crores. He had earned a profit of Rs 2.4 crores. He gave Rs 1.2 crore to Mr. Aditya Gupta and kept Rs 1.2 crore with him. On regular inspection and by conducting enquiries of the brokers involved, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) was able to detect this irregularity. SEBI imposed a heavy penalty on Aditya Gupta. By quoting the lines from the above para identify and state any two functions that were performed by SEBI in the above case.

Answer 1

In the given scenario, the two functions performed by SEBI are

i. 'Regulatory Functions', and

ii. 'Protective Functions'.

The lines indicating these functions are given as follows.

The line 'On regular inspection and by conducting enquires of the brokers involved' implies regulatory functions And, the line ‘SEBI imposed a heavy penalty on Adity Gupta' implies protective functions.