One of the biggest foreign institutional investors Goldman Sachs was given a clean chit by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in the stock market crash of May 17, 2004.
Sebi in a statement issued on its website said that no adverse findings could be recorded against the FII, considering the given facts and the circumstances of the case, and therefore no penalty could be levied.
Sebi had initiated inquiries into the May 17, 2004 stock market crash prominently known as Black Monday. On that day, the Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark Sensex crashed by 842 points during intra-day trade, which led to temporary stoppage of trading twice, both on the BSE and the National Stock Exchange.
Following this, investigation against two big FII including Goldman and UBS Securities were initiated by Sebi. While Sebi had found UBS guilty of not providing adequate information to Sebi and imposed a trading ban, the order was overturned by the Securities Appellate Tribunal.
In the case of Goldman Sachs it was noticed that the institution purchased shares of Rs 49.32 crore and sold shares for Rs 162.5 crore. Goldman Sach was operating in India through broking house by Kotak Securities and Motilal Oswal. On the day of the crash, total FII purchases were to the tune of Rs 1,236.77 crore and total sales amounted to Rs 1,310 crore.
Trades were witnessed mainly in the scrips of ONGC, Wipro, HPCL, and Telco.
