Mumbai: India’s capital markets regulator has rejected settlement applications by foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) that held significant stakes in listed Adani Group companies, people familiar with the matter said. This was because the FPIs’ terms failed to align with those proposed by Sebi, they said.
The regulator communicated its decision to the FPIs’ representatives last week, the people said, reviving a case that dates back to October 2020, when Sebi’s surveillance systems first flagged the unusual concentration of their holdings. Sebi’s investigation had flagged 13 FPIs. They subsequently sought to settle the case.
“The terms were not in line with the settlement terms suggested by Sebi. Therefore, Sebi rejected the application,” the regulator said in its communication to the FPIs. “This recommendation (rejection of the application) of HPAC (high-powered advisory committee on settlement orders) was accepted by the panel of whole-time members in terms of regulation 15(1) of the Settlement Regulations, 2018.”
At the centre of the standoff, according to one of the people, was the reluctance of some FPIs to fully disclose information Sebi considered essential to any settlement. “You have to come clean if you want to settle a case. Some FPIs were unwilling to provide certain details to Sebi, which was a precondition for settlement,” the person said. “Entities must first agree to the non-monetary terms.”
Agencies
Breach of Securities Law Another person said some FPIs, at a joint meeting with Sebi, were unwilling to ‘disgorge’ the amount sought by the regulator, which ran into hundreds of crores.
Settlement is a well-trodden route for entities facing securities law violations in India, one that lets them resolve disputes without admitting or denying wrongdoing. An applicant proposes terms to Sebi, which reviews the application and counters with its own, typically a monetary settlement amount, and sometimes non-monetary conditions such as trading bans. The two sides negotiate, and the final proposal goes to Sebi’s high-powered advisory committee, led by a former high court judge, for approval or rejection.
The 13 FPIs are Albula Investment Fund, Cresta Fund, MGC Fund, Asia Investment Corporation (Mauritius), APMS Investment Fund, Elara India Opportunities Fund, Vespera Fund, LTS Investment Fund, Emerging India Focus Funds, EM Resurgent Fund, Polus Global Fund, New Leaina Investments and Opal Investments.
The funds filed multiple settlement applications in April 2024 after Sebi issued show-cause notices to them under two separate tracks – one questioning why their FPI registrations should not be cancelled, and the other seeking to fine them for breaches of securities law. It could not be ascertained which applications were turned down.
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The regulator’s original concern was whether these FPIs were genuine public shareholders, or fronts for the Adani Group’s own promoters.
The probe gained global attention after a January 2023 report by Hindenburg Research accused the Adani Group of round-tripping and market manipulation, triggering a sharp sell-off in its stocks. The conglomerate denied the allegations.
In its submissions to the Supreme Court in August 2023, amid multiple public interest litigations seeking a probe into the Hindenburg claims, Sebi disclosed that it had reviewed trading in seven Adani stocks – Adani Enterprises, Adani Ports & SEZ, Adani Green Energy, Adani Energy Solutions, Adani Power, Adani Total Gas and Adani Wilmar – between March 2020 and December 2022, examining price-volume manipulation and breaches of minimum public shareholding, FPI investment limit and offshore derivative instrument norms.
The regulator identified 42 contributories to the FPIs’ assets under management. But it hit a wall trying to trace their ultimate beneficial owners, hampered by a lack of cooperation from its foreign counterparts.
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When the Supreme Court disposed of the PILs in January 2024, it directed Sebi to bring its investigations to a “logical conclusion in accordance with law.”
With Sebi rejecting the settlement applications, the regulator will now continue legal proceedings against the FPIs.
Sebi, Adani Group and the FPIs did not respond to emailed queries.
Second Chance
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The door may not stay shut for long. Sebi is planning to revise its settlement rules in a way that could give rejected applicants, including, potentially, these FPIs, another shot at resolving their cases.
Currently, an entity that has had its settlement application rejected cannot reapply at any stage of proceedings, including during an appeal. Under the proposed changes, applicants would be allowed to return to the settlement table if circumstances have changed and the grounds for the original rejection no longer apply. The price of a second chance: an additional 20% on top of the settlement amount.
David H. Lerner is an analyst with a decade of experience utilizing his professional background in software consulting and technology to identify market trends and provide long and short trade ideas. David employs a combination of technical analysis and market psychology to capitalize on narratives for outsized returns. He also utilizes “Cash Management Discipline,” a simple trading style to hedge against the volatility of today’s market climate.He leads the investing group Active Investors Forum where he uncovers actionable trading and investing ideas nearly every day. Other features include: long and short swing trade alerts, daily macro analysis, weekly articles, and chat for community interaction and questions. Learn More.
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City Chic Collective Limited (CCCHF) Q4 2026 Earnings Call August 23, 2026 7:30 PM EDT
Company Participants
Philip Ryan – CEO, MD & Director James Plummer – Chief Financial Officer
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Presentation
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. My name is Krista, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the City Chic Collective Full Year 2026 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]
I would now like to turn the conference over to Phil Ryan, Managing Director and CEO. Phil, please go ahead.
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Philip Ryan CEO, MD & Director
Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. I’m Phil Ryan, the CEO of City Chic Collective, and I’m joined today by our CFO, James Plummer. This morning, I will run through the presentation, starting with the key highlights and business update. James will then take you through the financials, and I’ll come back to discuss the FY ’27 trading update and outlook before opening up to questions.
Moving to Slide 2. FY ’26 was another important year for City Chic, and I’m very pleased with the progress we have made. Underlying EBITDA increased to $12.3 million, up 92% on the prior period. This was driven by the continued execution of our strategy across customer, product and cost discipline. ANZ revenue was up 7.6% and trading gross margin dollars were up 8.2%. This shows that the strategy continues to gain traction even in the consumer environment that remains challenging due to the cost of living crisis. The continued improvement in margin demonstrates the success of our strategic focus on product elevation and pricing discipline with average selling price increasing a further 4.5% in FY ’26. Cut for Curves is our Fit Promise to our customer. It’s at the core of our brand and remains our key strategic differentiator.
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New Delhi: The country’s equity derivatives market has taken on a notably younger profile, with traders under 30 making up 43% of individual participants in FY26, a sharp rise from 31% four years earlier, according to a study.
However, the younger cohort also recorded a higher incidence of losses, the study by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) revealed.
Around 89% of traders below 30 were loss-makers in FY26 compared to 81% of participants above 60.
The changing age profile is part of a wider transformation in the retail derivatives market, which has increasingly drawn investors outside India’s largest cities and from relatively lower-income groups. About three-fourths of individual derivatives traders belonged to the annual income category of below ₹5 lakh. This group accounted for 43% of turnover, but 53% of aggregate losses, the regulator said. Around 88% of traders in this income category incurred losses, compared with 81% of investors with annual income of above ₹1 crore.
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The geographical spread of derivatives participation has been equally striking.
The study noted that B30 investors account for only about one-fourth of individual mutual fund assets, pointing to a markedly higher derivatives risk appetite relative to their broader investment behaviour. The study also examined the relationship between derivatives trading and the size of investors’ underlying equity portfolios.
Cathy Hepworth, who heads $1.5 trillion asset manager PGIM‘s emerging-markets debt team, doesn’t hesitate when asked about her highest-conviction theme across the developing world: “Carry, carry, carry.”
She’s referring to a popular but often risky trade in which investors borrow cheaply in currencies like the US dollar, Japanese yen, or euro, and put the money to work in higher-yielding currencies like the Turkish lira, where interest payments on bonds or money-market funds can be as much as 40% or higher.
Carry trades funded by the US dollar are on their longest winning run since 2008, yielding positive returns for a seventh successive quarter.
“It’s a carry world,” said Hepworth, who joined PGIM in 1989 and helped establish its emerging-markets debt management effort in 1995. “There’s a ton of money looking for yield.”
The emerging-market carry trade has returned about 22% since the end of 2024, according to a Bloomberg gauge of eight major EM currencies, handily beating all other major classes of global bond trades. Investing in US Treasuries has earned just 5.9% over the same period, while dollar bonds from developing world governments returned 14% and EM corporate debt 10%. Returns have been amplified by a dollar that’s weakening against major emerging-market currencies outside Asia and cheapening versus low-rate peers like the euro and Swiss franc also used to fund carry trades. That makes for a heady mix in Colombia, which offers a 12% bond return with 45% spot appreciation. Even in Turkey, where the lira has lost 26% against the dollar, yields above 32% on 10-year local bonds have kept investors in profit.
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