The DCB Bank counter is being probed by market regulator SEBI for alleged insider trading and front running.
According to the source SEBI was studying details of key shareholders and bank insiders who bought and sold DCB Bank shares in both cash and derivative segments in 2015.
An angle that SEBI was looking at apart from bank insiders was how Ambit Corporate Finance, an arm of Mumbai-based Ambit Capital, ignored the bullish sentiment towards DCB Bank displayed by an analyst in one of its own research house and kept paring its holding in the counter.
DCB was part of Ambit’s ‘good and clean’ report and its research analysts were the most publicly bullish ones on DCB Bank. In fact, in 2015, DCB Bank was among the top pick for Ambit Research. But Ambit Corporate Finance, which held a 4.18 per cent stake in DCB Bank in September 2014 cut its holding to 1.93 per cent as on September 2015 ahead of DCB Bank’s crucial result.
Ambit’s role
In September 2014, Ambit’s holding in DCB was worth around ₹100 crore but it kept selling substantial quantity of shares every quarter. Also, Ambit Corporate Finance has played a key role in DCB Bank’s fund-raising and qualified institutional placement even in 2014 and 2015.
