Pantaloon settles investor grievance case with Sebi

Capital market regulator Securities and Exchange

Board of India (Sebi) has agreed to settle a case related to Pantaloon Retail failing to redress investor grievances after the company agreed to pay Rs 7.5 lakh towards settlement charges and legal costs. Sebi had passed an order on October 2011, where it had imposed a penalty of Rs five lakh on Pantaloon Retail after finding the company had failed in redressing investor grievances within the stipulated time.

Earlier Pantaloon had challenged Sebi’s order in an appeal before the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT), it later proposed to settle the case through Sebi’s consent mechanism, which allows for settlement of the matter in certain cases.

In its final consent order on the matter, Sebi has now said that Pantaloon has paid Rs 6.5 lakh towards settlement charges and Rs one lakh as legal expenses, pursuant to which the proceedings initiated by the regulator stand settled. Sebi said Pantaloon representatives had a meeting with Sebi’s Internal Committee in April, after which they had proposed the revised consent terms involving these payments to settle the proceedings.

Sebi had imposed penalty on Pantaloon in October 2011 after it found that a large number of grievances were pending for more than six months against it as on June 30, 2010. The company was asked to redress these grievances and submit an ‘Action Taken Report’ within a stipulated time, but it failed to do so and therefore necessitated an action, the regulator had said at that time.