Question marks over the merger of ICICI Securities with ICICI has entangled Sebi chairperson Madhabi Puri-Buch — buffeted by charges of her links with obscure investment funds linked with Gautam Adani’s brother Vinod, and delay in the regulator’s probe into the charges against the Adani group by US short seller Hindenburg.

The merger will see the delisting of ICICI Securities (ISec) in which the private sector bank currently holds around 74.64 per cent.

Under the scheme, the shareholders of ISec will receive 67 shares of the bank for every 100 shares held. Post delisting, ISec will become a fully owned subsidiary of ICICI Bank.

A Bloomberg column on Monday reignited the controversy over the delisting of the brokerage where Puri-Buch was CEO between 2009 and 2011.

A shareholder — Aruna Vinod Modi — had approached the Bombay High Court contesting the market regulator’s decision to exempt the demerger from the reverse book building process.

Last month, the Bombay High Court directed the market regulator to disclose the exemption letter given to ISec, subject to confidentiality.

Accordingly, the petitioner cannot share or reproduce the letter to a third party without the consent of the Court. The matter will reportedly be heard on October 9.

Modi had contented that Sebi can only grant exemption under the delisting regulations if both the subsidiary and the holding company are in the same line of business.

The petitioner had argued that since ISec is into the broking business and ICICI Bank a commercial bank, the exemption should not apply.

Last month, the Mumbai bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) had approved the delisting application of ISec.

The tribunal had also rejected objections filed by minority shareholders Quantum Mutual Fund and Manu Rishi Gupta.

Quantum Mutual Fund held 0.08 per cent and Manu Rishi Gupta, a minority shareholder, held 0.002 per cent shares in ICICI Securities. Earlier, the scheme was approved by 93.8 per cent equity shareholders of ICICI Securities.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is supposed to hear a petition filed by Vishal Tiwari urging the apex court to direct Sebi to present its final report on the regulators’ investigations into 24 specific charges that Hindenburg Research had levelled against Gautam Adani and his group in January 2023.

Hindenburg last month had said that Buch and her husband Dhaval Buch had in 2015 invested in obscure offshore funds that Vinod Adani allegedly used to invest in the Indian markets from money that was siphoned from over-invoicing of power equipment to the Adani group.