The Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) has stayed “effective operation” of the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (SEBI) order, accusing Kishore Biyani of the Future Group from insider trading charges for purchases of Future Retail (FRL) shares made in March 2017. 

The tribunal has however directed the Future Group’s promoters to deposit Rs 11 crore as an “interim measure”. The case will be heard next on April 12, 2021. In its earlier order, market regulator SEBI had barred Mr Biyani and four others from the capital markets for a period of one year for alleged insider trading violations. It had also barred Mr Biyani and the four others from dealing in FRL shares for a period of two years. 

Making its representation to the tribunal, the Future Group had said that restructuring of its home furnishing business had been public knowledge since 2016. “The restructuring of the home furnishing businesses in the Future Group (with the physical store format of Future Retail and online store format of Future Enterprises being demerger into a new company) had been well known in the public since 2016,” the Future Group had argued before the tribunal. 

The Future Group’s counsel Somasekhar Sundaresan had argued that the actual terms of the restructuring were initiated only in April 2017, while the purchases were made in March to use the creeping acquisition limits under the takeover regulations. 

Mr Sundaresan had also referred to a SEBI hearing, where another official had “exonerated Bharti Airtel Group on the premise that information published in newspapers would be considered general information”. He had further pointed out that home furnishing was a “miniscule component” of the group’s overall business and was “hardly material for price discovery of FRL shares.”