Taking stock of Sebi

A regulator's job entails standing up to a variety of pulls and pressures exerted by vested interests

A Game Changer’s Memoir

G N Bajpai

Portfolio Penguin

347 pages;Rs 599

Today the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is held in reasonably high esteem. Its recent reforms are widely credited with having galvanised the large-scale participation of retail investors in mutual funds. But things were not always so hunky-dory. When the author, then serving as chairman of the Life Insurance Corporation of India, was asked to take over as Sebi chairman, its prestige had taken a severe battering in the wake of a stock-manipulation scam, locally known as the Ketan Parekh scam. In this book, Mr