Varun Beverages chairman settles insider trading norm breach probe

 22 Jun 2022

The chairman and promoter of Varun Beverages Ltd, Ravi Kant Jaipuria, has paid 5.6 mln rupees to the Securities and Exchange Board of India to settle an investigation against him for allegedly having violated the insider trading norms.

According to a settlement order issued by SEBI on Tuesday, a show cause notice was issued to Jaipuria for having allegedly passed on unpublished price sensitive information pertaining to a strategic partnership between Varun Beverages and PepsiCo India during December 2017 to January 2018.

SEBI was probing whether Jaipuria, who was also a director in Lemon Tree Hotels, had communicated the information to two directors of Lemon Tree Hotels, chairman and managing director, Patanjali Keswani, and independent director, Arvind Singhania when they met in a hotel in Bangkok.

SEBI investigation had found that shares of Varun Beverages were bought by two entities controlled by Keswani and Singhania during the period when news of partnership with PepsiCo India was not in the public domain and sold it all immediately after the news was announced by Varun Beverages and the prices had moved up in reaction to the announcement.