Sebi slaps penalty of Rs 15 lakh on United Brewries

Matter pertains to non-disclosure of pledged shares

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) on Friday slapped a penalty of Rs 15 lakh on the United Brewries Holding Ltd (UBHL) for non-disclosure of pledged shares.

As per the Sebi adjudicating order during the course of investigation, it was observed that the noticees namely UBHL and Kingfisher Fininvest who are the promoter entities of United Spirits had undertaken 15 and 2 pledge transactions respectively with regards to some of their united spiritis shareholding.

The regulator said United Breweries Holding, as promoter of United Spirits, did not make disclosures in total four transactions related to 'invocation of pledge' that took place on February 15, 2012 and March 24, 26 of 2012.

 

It also failed to make disclosures regarding the 'creation of pledges' that took place on March 26, 2012.

"It was revealed that the Noticees had failed to make disclosures regarding creation / invocation / release of their certain pledges transaction as required under regulation 31 of the SAST Regulations," said Sebi in the adjudicating order.

While penalising UBHL, the regulator has let off Kingfisher Finvest India without levying any penalty as the company had made the disclosure pertaining to release of 10,000 pledge shares with a delay of just one day.

Further, efforts were made by the company to dispatch the required disclosures to all the three stock exchanges before the due date.

Even though it reached to NSE and BSE with mere one day delay, but it reached to Bangalore stock exchange on the due date itself.