If you're an Indian, you probably have at least one relative or friend who relies completely on the advice of an astrologer or a "guru."
But what if we told you your stock investments were also guided by a "yogi" for quite some time?
Yes, the National Stock Exchange was running on the advice of a yogi from around 2013-16.
Wondering what the whole story is?
The Monk Who Sold Stocks?
The story begins in 2013 when Chitra Ramakrishna was appointed the CEO of NSE.
The problem here was that for 20 years of her life, she had been taking advice from a spiritual guru.
And she thought she would continue doing so, even at NSE.
Now, the NSE office is not your regular office. It sees 49 crores of transactions a day and handles a lot of sensitive and confidential information.
But Ramakrishna decided to bare it all to her guru sitting in the Himalayas: dividend payout ratios, five-year projections, board meetings agendas, everything. The yogi even knew employees by name and gave orders about what they should be doing.
And that's not all. Since the yogi himself couldn't be present in the office, he directed Ramakrishna to appoint a Chief Strategic Advisor of his choice, a position that didn't exist.
This advisor was surely an expert though, right?
You wish. Anand Subramanian was a middle-management employee at Balmer and Lawrie and had no experience of working in finance. Despite this, not only was he hired, but also given a 9x hike!
From earning Rs. 15 lakhs per year, he went to an annual salary of Rs. 1.68 crores (Don't you want to be recommended by a yogi now?).
No HR or any other member was involved in his appointment or his appraisals. Ramakrishna kept giving him regular raises and made him the Group Operating Officer in 2015, increasing his salary to Rs. 4.21 crores!
Since he wasn't an ordinary employee, Subramanian also got to work three-day weeks. That's the life, eh?
And because of all the perks he seemed to have received as blessings of the yogi, many people now seem to believe that he is the yogi himself. The NSE also employed practitioners dealing with human psychology who have come to the same conclusion.
Wondering how all of this came to light?
Thanks to another huge scandal.
2010 onwards, another malpractice scam was being run at the NSE. It gave certain trading members access to confidential data ahead of time but was exposed in 2015 because of a whistleblower.
During the investigation of that scandal and after complaints about governance issues from employees, SEBI began a probe into the matter.
Result? Both Ramakrishna and Subramanian resigned in 2016. But the results of the probe have taken six years to come.
Ramakrishna and her vice-chairman Ravi Narain have been fined Rs. 3 crores and Rs. 2 crores respectively, while Subramanian and the NSE have been fined Rs. 2 crores.
Plus, they won't be allowed to associate with any SEBI-registered entity for three years.
In addition to this, Ramakrishna has been asked to return the Rs 1.54 crores paid to her as leave encashment. A Rs 2.83 crore of deferred bonus payment will also be withheld from her.
And the NSE won't be allowed to launch any new products for the next six months.
Now, despite this 6-year probe, the true identity of the yogi is still a mystery.
Do you think the crime matches the punishment for Ramakrishna and Subramanian? Or should stricter penalties be imposed to stop such frauds from repeating in the future?
P.S. Here's SEBI's entire 190-page report about this scam.
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Now suddenly yogi coming in the picture, is an interesting event to know if one is aware of the sequence of scams that took place at NSE ;)