Finance Secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey appointed as SEBI chairman

Pandey's elevation to the SEBI role, as approved by the Appointment Committee of the Cabinet, will be for an initial period of three years, as per an official notification.

Bengaluru: The Union Government, on Thursday, appointed Finance Secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey as the next Chairman of Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). Pandey, a 1987-batch IAS officer from the Odisha cadre, will be the eleventh person to head the markets regulator since its establishment in 1988.

Pandey currently is the seniormost bureaucrat in the Finance Ministry and heads the Department of Revenue. Before this, as the Secretary of the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM), he was instrumental in the privatisation of Air India and the initial public offering of LIC Ltd.

His elevation to the SEBI role, as approved by the Appointment Committee of the Cabinet, will be for an initial period of three years, as per an official notification.

Pandey replaces Madhabi Puri Buch, who was the first woman and the first person from the private sector to head SEBI. That Buch was to be given only one term was first reported by DH in October.

The government decided to not extend Puri’s tenure due to the reputational damage caused to the equity markets regulator by the allegations made against her by Hindenburg Research, and a letter last year by SEBI employees to the Finance Ministry stating that the work culture at the federal regulator had turned toxic under her leadership.

While the central government and the Finance Ministry believed that the allegations against Buch by Hindenburg were weak, the leadership was aware that extending her tenure would have given more ammunition to the opposition and critics of the government.

Pandey takes charge of SEBI at a time when the stock markets have sharply come off their lifetime highs in 2024, and are witnessing massive exodus of foreign capital.