New Delhi: A three-member bench of the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) was set to begin hearing on Tuesday in a case between US trading company Jane Street Group LLC and capital markets regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI).
The New York-based firm has challenged SEBI’s July interim order that accused it of manipulative trading in India’s equity derivatives market. Jane Street argued that the regulator denied it access to crucial documents, including correspondence with whistleblower Mayank Bansal and the National Stock Exchange (NSE).
It has asked the tribunal to halt further regulatory action until the appeal is resolved. Jane Street maintained that both SEBI and the NSE previously reviewed its trades and found no evidence of manipulation. SEBI, however, could argue that those reviews are independent of its decision to open a fresh probe. Jane Street has been barred by the SEBI from the Indian stock market for indulging in manipulative trading practices that allegedly enabled the company to make unlawful profits.
In an interim order, the SEBI alleged that global trading firm Jane Street was deliberately manipulating the index through a series of trades that it said lacked “plausible economic rationale.” SEBI called it a case of “intra-day index manipulation,” flagging what it described as aggressive, unhedged positions in Nifty Bank options and other instruments.
India has become the world’s largest derivatives market by contracts traded, drawing Wall Street players such as Jump Trading, Citadel Securities and IMC Trading. A SEBI study had earlier showed that retail investors lost $12 billion in futures and options trading during FY25, largely to sophisticated proprietary trading firms.
Jane Street is a proprietary trading firm, which means it trades with its own capital rather than managing client funds. The firm allegedly made a staggering Rs 32,681 crore in profits by manipulating the Indian stock market and repatriating the amount overseas.
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