SEBI v. Rana Kapoor (YES Bank AT1 bonds mis-selling, 2022)
Judgment entered
Checked against the primary document on October 9, 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.
In September 2022 a SEBI adjudicating officer fined Rana Kapoor, founder and former head of YES Bank, Rs 2 crore under section 15HA over the mis-selling of the bank's Additional Tier 1 bonds to retail customers between 2016 and 2019. The order finds he breached the PFUTP Regulations and notes that about 1,346 individuals put roughly Rs 679 crore into the bonds.
The record
| Agency | SEBI (India) |
|---|---|
| Date filed | 2022-09-07 |
| Date resolved | 2022-09-07 |
| Court | SEBI adjudicating officer |
| Status | judgment |
| Asset class | fixed income |
| Instruments | YES Bank Additional Tier 1 bonds |
| Venue | over the counter |
| Criminal parallel | No |
| Defendants | Rana Kapoor |
| Techniques |
What was ordered
- Civil penalty
- —
- Disgorgement
- —
- Prejudgment interest
- —
- Total relief
- —
- Alleged gain
- —
- Penalty as published
- 20m INR
What is alleged to have happened
This adjudication order of 7 September 2022 concerns Rana Kapoor and the Basel III Additional Tier 1 bonds that YES Bank Limited issued first to institutional investors. SEBI received many complaints from retail buyers, among them older customers who said the bonds were passed off as safer alternatives to fixed deposits, and that relationship managers told them the bonds were safe because the bank was large and well rated. Investors lost heavily when the bonds were written down in 2020.
SEBI investigated the sale of the bonds between December 2016 and February 2020, asking whether the bank's officials mis-sold them to retail investors and whether sales by the institutional holders to retail through the bank breached the PFUTP Regulations. The adjudication was brought against Mr Kapoor on the footing that he was responsible for the bank's conduct while he led it.
The officer found that he violated regulations 3 and 4 of the PFUTP Regulations and sections 12A(b) and 12A(c) of the SEBI Act, including the explanation on mis-selling. In fixing the penalty the order records that gain could not be quantified, that the violation was not repetitive, but that 1,346 individual investors put in about Rs 679 crore, of which 1,311 were existing customers who put in about Rs 663 crore, and that 277 customers closed fixed deposits early to reinvest about Rs 80 crore in bonds that were later written down. Sales ran from 2016 to 2019.
The penalty imposed is Rs 2 crore under section 15HA, payable within 45 days. No restraint from the market is stated in the operative paragraphs.
The record does not show whether Mr Kapoor appealed, whether he paid, or how the matter relates to other proceedings against him or the bank.
This library has no technique that fits mis-selling of bank capital bonds to retail customers, so the matter is tagged with none. 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.
Timeline
- 2022-09-07 SEBI 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.