ADVERTISEMENT

Sun Pharma’s Senior Executive, Wife Settle Insider Trading Case With SEBI

Abhay Arvind Gandhi and his wife Kiran have paid over Rs 70 lakh as settlement charges.



Employees enter the Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. corporate office in the Andheri suburb of Mumbai, India. (Photographer: Amit Madheshiya/Bloomberg)
Employees enter the Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. corporate office in the Andheri suburb of Mumbai, India. (Photographer: Amit Madheshiya/Bloomberg)

Sun Pharmaceutical group’s Senior Executive Abhay Arvind Gandhi and his wife Kiran have settled a case with the Securities and Exchange Board of India related to insider trading in shares of Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. in 2014.

Both paid a total of over Rs 70 lakh as settlement charges. At the time of alleged violation, Abhay Arvind Gandhi was the chief executive officer of Sun Pharma Laboratories Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.

Currently, Abhay Gandhi is CEO of Sun Pharma’s North America business. Gandhi and his wife traded in Ranbaxy shares soon after Japanese major Daiichi, in 2014, agreed to sell Ranbaxy to Sun Pharma.

According to separate notices sent to the two individuals, they had traded in the shares of Ranbaxy when the proposed deal was to be made public.

The proposed deal was Unpublished Price Sensitive Information from Feb. 14, 2014 to April 6, 2014. By trading in the shares of Ranbaxy during that period, both allegedly violated prohibition of insider trading norms, as per the notices. As Gandhi was then the chief of Sun Pharma Laboratories, he and his wife were insiders under the SEBI norms. Gandhi and Kiran traded in 454 shares and 6,770 shares, respectively, during the UPSI period. In two separate but similarly-worded orders issued on Thursday, SEBI said the two individuals sought to settle the adjudication proceedings initiated against them in 2017.

Under SEBI’s settlement mechanism, without admission or denial of guilt, both proposed to pay Rs 35.06 lakh each to settle the case.

The settlement amounts proposed were approved by a panel of SEBI’s whole time members, according to the two orders.

While settling the case, the regulator also said that enforcement actions could be initiated if any representation made by the two individuals is found to be untrue.