SEBI v. Macquarie Finance (India) Pvt Ltd and Carron Investments Pvt Ltd (box trades in long-dated Nifty options, 2022)

Judgment entered

✓ Checked against the primary document on October 8, 2026. The library's summary, tags and figures for this record were compared with the regulator's own document by an AI model (Claude) following written instructions, in a single reading of the order; an independent second reading of 60 SEBI records agreed on every field for 56, the four misses being penalty amounts; a later sample of 50 of the SEBI records added on 9 October agreed on every field for 46. No lawyer has reviewed them. A checked record can still contain errors, and checked does not mean endorsed. See how we check records or report a correction.

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In July 2022 a SEBI adjudicating officer penalised Macquarie Finance (India) Pvt Ltd and Carron Investments Pvt Ltd Rs 5 lakh each for entering into box trades in long-dated Nifty options on 27 November 2013. SEBI said the pre-arranged trades functioned as a loan of about Rs 3.73 crore repaid with interest at expiry.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

1m INR

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars. This regulator states penalties in INR. The figure is recorded as published and is not converted, so it does not appear in the USD totals or medians used elsewhere on this site.

What is alleged to have happened

An adjudicating officer of SEBI issued this order on 7 July 2022 against Macquarie Finance (India) Pvt Ltd and Carron Investments Private Limited, which had taken over Modern Trading Business Pvt Ltd, formerly HOT n ICE Entertainment Company Pvt Ltd. SEBI had investigated box trades in long-dated Nifty options expiring on 26 June 2014 from 27 November 2013 to expiry. The show cause notice is dated 23 December 2021.

A box trade combines options so that the payoff at expiry is fixed whatever the index does. SEBI alleged that on 27 November 2013 the two parties traded illiquid, deep in-the-money and out-of-the-money options with each other in a way that set the premium at a level agreed between them. The result was a flow of about Rs 3.73 crore from Macquarie to its counterparty that, if the positions ran to expiry, returned Rs 4.00 crore, leaving an implied interest of about Rs 0.27 crore, so that the trades worked as a disguised loan.

The officer held the two parties liable under Regulations 3(d), 4(1), 4(2)(a) and 4(2)(e) of the 2003 fraud and unfair trade practices regulations. Each was penalised Rs 5,00,000 under section 15HA of the SEBI Act, a total of Rs 10,00,000, payable within 45 days. The officer noted that investor losses were not quantified and that the default was not repetitive.

The order places the dispute in the setting of pre-arranged trades with no real market risk, and the library tags it that way as an approximation, because it has no technique page for box trades.

The record does not show whether the penalties were paid or appealed, or the further positions of either party. The order does not mention a criminal case.

This library tags the matter as matched orders, as the nearest available technique for pre-arranged box trades. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the order.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Matched orders — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2022-07-07 SEBI adjudication order

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• SEBI order

The linked release is published by the issuing regulator under its own terms. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added October 8, 2026. submit a correction.