23 days ago
291 Views
I am writing this review not as a researcher, but as someone who trusted Piramal Finance with hard-earned money and now feels completely betrayed. People think of Piramal as a respectable business group, but the more I followed their trail, the more it became clear that this company functions in a universe where rules do not apply to them and only small investors are made to suffer.
The pattern goes back years. In 2016, SEBI fined Piramal Enterprises for insider-trading lapses during the$3.7-billion Abbott deal. Ajay Piramal and members of his family like Anand Piramal had access to unpublished price-sensitive information, and the trading window remained open during the deal. And what happened afterward? The Securities Appellate Tribunal overturned the penalty and converted it into a warning. In other words, everyone walked away unscathed.
Nothing changed after that. In 2024, another insider-trading investigation involving former Piramal Capital & Housing Finance MD Khushru Jijina was settled for ₹;43.55 crore. The allegation was the misuse of insider information for trading gains. This was one of the biggest UPSI-linked settlements of the decade. Yet again, no criminal action, no meaningful consequence. The same cycle of settlement and dilution played out.
There were also governance concerns in Piramals sale of its 8.34% Shriram Finance stake. SEBI flagged timing irregularities and information advantages classic patterns of regulatory boundary-pushing. Even earlier, during the VodafoneEssar period, SEBI scrutinized questionable trading involving entities connected to Piramals investment network. Each episode reinforced the same story recurring information-governance failures masked by compliance paperwork.
This is why I say that Piramals insider-trading lapses are not isolated incidents. They are structural. In Indias corporate world, scandal becomes a method, and manipulation becomes an operating manual. The system absorbs wrongdoing, normalises it, and presents a polished compliance faade to the public.
The contrast with the Rajat Gupta case is telling. Gupta was convicted and imprisoned in the United States for leaking insider information. Piramal, despite multiple episodes indicating insider-information misuse and control failures, has faced no comparable criminal sanction. SAT dilutions, regulatory settlements, and lack of prosecutorial seriousness have created an ecosystem where accountability simply does not reach them. Their proximity to the ruling BJP through significant political funding adds another layer of insulation.
As a DHFL fixed-deposit holder, I expected fairness after the takeover. Instead, retail investors like us recovered only a fraction of our money while Piramal secured the business assets without meaningful scrutiny. The advertisements talk about ethics and trust, but my personal experience has been one of shock, helplessness, and zero accountability.
If you are a retail investor, please be cautious. Piramal Finance may be a large corporate entity, but when things go wrong, there is no meaningful recourse for ordinary people. Trust is demanded, not earned, and the burden of loss is pushed onto the public.
I do not recommend Piramal Finance to any consumer, investor, or deposit holder. My only purpose in writing this review is to warn others before they make the same mistake I made.
