Who is Madhabi Puri Buch, the new SEBI chief?

On Tuesday, Madhabi Puri Buch took over as the new chairperson of the Securities and Exchange Board of India, which regulates India’s $3.3 trillion stock market ecosystem. She has been appointed for an initial period of three years by the government and replaces Ajay Tyagi, whose five year term ended on Monday. 

She joins at a time when the markets are volatile due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict and India’s largest-ever Initial Public Offering by Life Insurance Corporation of India is about to be launched.

She brings many firsts to Sebi. Buch is the first woman to head India’s stock market regulator. And at 56, she is the youngest chairperson. She is also the first non-IAS individual since 2002 as well as the first person from the private sector to lead the markets watchdog.

However, she has had a more than 4.5 year stint as a Whole-Time Member of Sebi, a post just below the chairperson, till October 4, 2021.   

Puri Buch has more than three decades of experience in the financial sector. An alumna of Delh’s St Stephen’s College and IIM Ahmedabad, she joined ICICI Bank as a Project Finance Analyst in 1989 and was there until 1992.

She re-joined the private lender in 1997 and rose through the ranks to become an Executive Director in 2006. Buch then served as the CEO of ICICI Securities, the broking and investment banking arm of the ICICI Group, between 2009 and 2011. 

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During her stint at ICICI, she held different positions including the Head of Marketing and Sales, Head of Product Development, Head of Operations and the Head of Brand Marketing.

She was among the handful of executives who were groomed by veteran banker KV Kamath, the founder and former CEO of ICICI Bank.

Before taking charge as the only female Whole Time Member at Sebi in April 2017, Buch served as the Head of Business Development at private equity firm Greater Pacific Capital in Singapore and acted as a consultant for New Development Bank in Shanghai. 

Besides, she has held non-executive director roles in several organisations, including Max Healthcare, Zensar Technologies and Innoven Capital.

She is also the founder of Agora Advisory, a consulting and incubation firm. As a Sebi Whole-Time Director, she was part of many committees and handled the Market Regulation Department, Integrated Surveillance Department, Department of Economic & Policy Analysis, the National Institute of Securities Markets and IT Department among others.

After the five-year term ended in October 2021, she was named the head of Sebi’s secondary market committee in December. 

During her previous stint at the regulator, she tried to inculcate a culture among her junior staffers to extensively use modern technology and data. In fact, she headed a technology panel that explored solutions for early detection of market anomalies. She had once said that turning Sebi into a tech savvy regulator was her single biggest achievement. 

 Buch is known for her data-driven approach to decision making. She was instrumental in bringing important changes to mutual fund regulations that benefited investors. These include a further reduction in the cost of investing, scheme classification and disclosures and introducing more safeguards for debt schemes.

 In her new role, she has to hit the ground running and perhaps the most urgent task is to review the internal governance mechanisms at the exchanges after the “yogi” scandal at the NSE highlighted the gaping holes in their governance systems.