SEBI v. Nimai Parekh and Rahil Dalal (HDFC merger settlement, 2024)

Settled

✓ 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 December 2024 SEBI settled, on the applicants' own initiative and before any show cause notice, suspected insider trading around the announced HDFC Limited and HDFC Bank merger. A valuer's team member and his friend paid settlement amounts of Rs 39,00,000 and Rs 35,00,000 respectively without admitting or denying the findings.

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

7.4m 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

Two SEBI whole-time members, Ananth Narayan G. and Kamlesh C. Varshney, issued the settlement order on 20 December 2024. The applicants were Nimai Parekh and Rahil Dalal, who filed suo motu settlement applications for proceedings that might be started against them, without admitting or denying findings of fact or conclusions of law.

SEBI had investigated trading in HDFC Limited and HDFC Bank Limited shares between November 2021 and April 2022 around the announcement on 4 April 2022 that HDFC Limited would merge into the bank. It described Mr Parekh as part of the Deloitte valuation team appointed by the bank on 29 March 2022, and so in possession of unpublished price sensitive information, and Mr Dalal as his close friend who talked frequently with him.

SEBI's account is that Mr Dalal's father's family HUF bought call option contracts in both companies before the announcement and sold after it, earning about Rs 5.67 lakh and Rs 2.52 lakh. It alleged that Mr Parekh may have communicated the information, in breach of Regulation 3(1) of the insider trading regulations and section 12A(d) of the SEBI Act, and that Mr Dalal procured it and passed it to his father, in breach of Regulations 3(1) and 3(2) and section 12A(d) and (e).

After committee review the approved settlement amounts were Rs 39,00,000 for Mr Parekh and Rs 35,00,000 for Mr Dalal, Rs 74,00,000 in all, paid in December 2024. SEBI agreed to start no enforcement action over the alleged violations, with the usual reservation if representations prove untrue or terms were miscalculated. A settlement contains no finding that a violation occurred.

The record does not show any restriction on the applicants, any action against Mr Dalal's father or the HUF, or any criminal case. The profit figures are SEBI's allegations as stated in the order, not findings.

This library tags the matter as insider trading. 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.

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

Timeline

1. 2024-12-20 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.

• SEBI order
• Order (PDF)

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.