Stock market regulator SEBI has restrained nine entities from accessing the securities market for manipulating the price of Ruchi Soya scrip on September 27, 2012.
In an ex-parte interim order on Friday, SEBI observed that these nine entities (Aventis Biofeeds, Moebius Credit and Capital, Sunmate Trade, Shreyans Credit and Capital, Vision Millennium Exports, Navinya Multitrade, Uni24 Techno Solutions, Betul Minerals and Construction, and Betul Oils and Feeds) had indulged in artificially inflating the closing price of the Ruchi Soya scrip.
SEBI’s surveillance threw alerts that four of the seven entities placed huge buy limit orders of 63 lakh shares between 14:27:30 and 14:59:30 at Rs 71 a share and this was revised for 62 lakh shares further to Rs 88 and Rs 88.20 during the last two minutes of trading. This was higher than the prevailing market price by 22 per cent, even though substantial sell orders were available at lower prices, observed SEBI.
In addition, five of the seven entities placed huge sell orders of 105 lakh shares between 14:24:15 and 14:48:10 at Rs 88 and Rs 88.20.
This was significantly higher than the prevailing market price of about Rs 71 a share. The order size was to 81 lakh shares collectively in the last three minutes of trading found SEBI.
This pushed up the closing/ settlement price of the scrip on the expiry day by Rs 8.15, increasing the entities’ positive square off gain on their long position in the derivatives of Ruchi Soya by approximately Rs 5.86 crore (71.96 lakh shares x Rs 8.15). This is called marking the close.