SAT quashes Sebi order against DLF, reduces capital market ban to 6 months

In a major relief for DLF, the Securities Appellate Tribunal on Friday quashed an order by Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) against the realty giant that had barred the company and its six top executives from capital markets for three years.

Soon after the Tribunal pronounced its order, the shares of DLF soared higher by about 8 per cent. The stock was trading 7.75 per cent up at Rs 160.5 on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) in early afternoon trade.

"We welcome this order and have full faith in the country's judicial system. We are in the process of studying the order and will comment accordingly," the real estate developer said in a statement after the SAT judgment.

SAT had reserved its order in February on appeals filed by DLF, Chairman KP Singh and five others, including his son Rajiv Singh and daughter Pia Singh.

Market regulator Sebi had passed the ban order in October 2014 after finding DLF and its executives guilty of "active and deliberate suppression" of material information at the time of its initial public offer (IPO) in 2007.

While that order did not include any monetary penalty, the Sebi passed another directive in February, in the same case, wherein it imposed penalties totalling Rs 86 crore on DLF, its top executives and a host of related persons and entities including spouses of some executives who were "housewives".

The order passed by the capital market watchdog in October was challenged by DLF the same month before the tribunal. DLF is yet to challenge the second order from Sebi.

In the case, apart from Singh, his son and daughter, Managing Director TC Goyal, former CFO Ramesh Sanka and Kameshwar Swarup, who was ED-Legal at the time of the company's public offer in 2007, were also barred by the Sebi.

After its over four-year-long probe, the Sebi had found that a "case of active and deliberate suppression of any material information so as to mislead and defraud the investors in the securities market in connection with the issue of shares of DLF in its IPO is clearly made out in this case".

DLF's IPO in 2007 had fetched Rs 9,187 crore and was the biggest IPO in the country at that time.