New Delhi, Dec 12 (PTI) Markets regulator Sebi on Friday cleared Pranav Adani, a director in several Adani Group companies and nephew of billionaire Gautam Adani, of allegations that he shared price-sensitive information and violated insider-trading rules.

Apart from Pranav Adani, Sebi also dismissed charges of insider trading rule violation against his two relatives.

The case centred on whether Pranav Adani had disclosed confidential details about Adani Green Energy's planned acquisition of SB Energy before the information became public.

To examine this, Sebi investigated trading in Adani Green Energy Ltd (AGEL) shares between January 28 and August 20, 2021. After reviewing an investigation report in November 2023, the regulator believed there could have been breaches of insider-trading norms and therefore initiated proceedings against three noticees -- Pranav Adani, Kunal Dhanpalbhai Shah and Nrupal Dhanpalbhai Shah.

Kunal is married to Pranav Adani's cousin, while Nrupal is married to his sister; the Shah brothers were accused of trading based on confidential information allegedly shared by Adani. These allegations were detailed in a show-cause notice issued on November 10, 2023.

However, after completing the investigation, Sebi found no evidence that Adani had shared any unpublished price-sensitive information (UPSI) or that the Shah brothers had traded on insider information.

In its 50-page order, Sebi noted that "the call dated May 16, 2021, was not for communicating any UPSI by Noticee No.1 (Pranav) and trades of Noticees No. 2 (Kunal) and 3 (Nrupal) were genuine and not influenced by any UPSI about the company or its securities." With this, the regulator concluded that the allegations could not be sustained, and since the trades appeared genuine, no penalties or directions were required.

Accordingly, Sebi disposed of the show-cause notice issued in November 2023 and closed the matter.

In its order, the regulator examined the broader context of the AGEL-SB Energy transaction. On May 19, 2021, at 08:20:21 hours, AGEL announced on the BSE and NSE that it had signed share purchase agreements with Softbank Group Capital and Bharti Global to acquire SB Energy. Following this, AGEL's stock rose from Rs 1,198.75 on May 18 to Rs 1,243.65 on May 19, an increase of 3.75 per cent.

A key part of the case involved a phone call placed by Kunal Shah to Pranav Adani on May 16, 2021, which regulators initially viewed as potential evidence of UPSI communication.

However, Sebi found that news reports about the SB Energy acquisition had already been published earlier that day, meaning the information was already in the public domain. Since UPSI must be non-public, Sebi held that information available widely through news reports could not form the basis of insider trading.

Moreover, Sebi observed that the impact of the news reports on AGEL's stock price was even greater than the formal announcement on May 19. The scrip hit the upper circuit, rising 5 per cent on May 17 and 4.84 per cent on May 18 compared with a 3.75 per cent rise on the day of the official disclosure.

This indicated that the market had already reacted to the publicly available information. Sebi therefore concluded that the information ceased to be UPSI on May 16 at 3:25 pm, once the news was published.

Given that the Shah brothers' trades were executed on May 17, after the information had become public, Sebi held that these trades could not be considered insider trading. As a result, the regulator reaffirmed that the May 16 call did not involve the sharing of UPSI and the trades were genuine.

In a separate order, Sebi also cleared insider-trading allegations against Vinod Bahety, Tarun Jain, Rajtaru Enterprises and MC Jain Infoservices in the matter of alleged insider trading in the scrip of Adani Green Energy. PTI SP MR