Harshad Mehta

Harshad Shantilal Mehta (29 July 1954 – 31 December 2001) was an Indian stockbroker and a convicted fraudster.

Harshad Shantilal Mehta was born on 29 July 1954, at Paneli Moti, Rajkot district, in a Gujarati Jain family.

His early childhood was spent in Borivali, where his father was a small-time textile businessman.

He did his early study in Janta Public School, Camp 2 Bhilai.

A cricket enthusiast, Mehta did not show any special promise in school and came to Mumbai after his schooling for studies and to find work.

Mehta completed his B.Com in 1976 from Lala Lajpatrai College, Bombay and worked a number of odd jobs for the next eight years.

Jobs, often related to sales, including selling hosiery, cement, and sorting diamonds.

Mehta started his career as a sales person in the Mumbai office of New India Assurance Company Limited (NIACL).

During this time, he got interested in the stock market and after a few days, resigned and joined a brokerage firm.

In the early 1980s, he moved to a lower level clerical job at the brokerage firm Harjivandas Nemidas Securities where he worked a jobber for the broker Prasann Pranjivandas Broker who he considered his "Guru".

Over a period of ten years, beginning 1980, he served in positions of increasing responsibility at a series of brokerage firms.

He actively started to trade in 1986.

By 1990, he had risen to a position of prominence in the Indian securities industry, with the media (including popular magazines such as Business Today) touting him as "Amitabh Bachchan of the Stock market".

Grow More Research and Asset Management, with the financial assistance of associates, when the BSE auctioned a broker's card.

By early 1990, a number of eminent people began to invest in his firm, and utilize his services.

It was at this time that he began trading heavily in the shares of Associated Cement Company (ACC).

The price of shares in the cement company eventually rose from ₹200 to nearly ₹9,000 due to a massive spate of buying from a set of brokers including Mehta.

Mehta justified this excessive trading in ACC shares by stating that the stock had been undervalued, and that the market had simply corrected when it revalued the company at a price equivalent to the cost of building a similar enterprise; the so-called "replacement cost theory" that he had put forward.

During this period, especially in 1990–1991, the media portrayed a heightened deified image of Mehta, calling him "The Big Bull".

He was covered in a cover page article of a number of publications including the popular economic magazine Business Today, in an article titled "Raging Bull".

His flashy lifestyle of a sea facing 15,000 square feet penthouse in the tony area of Worli complete with a mini golf course and swimming pool, and his fleet of cars including a Toyota Corolla, Lexus LS400, and Toyota Sera were flashed in publications.

These further exemplified his image at a time when these were rarities even for the rich people of India.

In criminal indictments later brought by the authorities, it was alleged that Mehta and his associates then undertook a much broader scheme, which resulted in manipulating the rise in the Bombay Stock Exchange.

The scheme was financed by supposedly collateralised bank receipts, which were in fact uncollateralised.

The bank receipts were used in short-term bank-to-bank lending, known as "ready forward" transactions, which Mehta's firm brokered.

By the second half of 1991 Mehta had earned the nickname of the "Big Bull", because he was said to have started the bull run in the stock market.

Some of the people who worked in his firm included Ketan Parekh, who later would be involved in his own replicate scam.

Up to the early 90's banks in India were not allowed to invest in the equity markets.

However, they were expected to post profits and to retain a certain ratio (threshold) of their assets in government fixed interest bonds.

Mehta cleverly squeezed capital out of the banking system to address this requirement of banks and pumped this money into the share market.

He also promised the banks higher rates of interest, while asking them to transfer the money into his personal account, under the guise of buying securities for them from other banks.

At that time, a bank had to go through a broker to buy securities and forward bonds from other banks.

Mehta used this money temporarily in his account to buy shares, thus hiking up demand of certain shares (of good established companies like ACC, Sterlite Industries and Videocon) dramatically, selling them off, passing on a part of the proceeds to the bank and kept the rest for himself.

This resulted in stocks like ACC (which was trading in 1991 for ₹200/share) skyrocketing to nearly ₹9,000 in just 3 months.

Mehta's involvement in the 1992 Indian securities scam (about ₹30,000 Crores) made him infamous as a market manipulator.

Of the 27 criminal charges brought against Mehta, he was only convicted of four, before his death (by sudden heart attack) at age 47 in 2001.

It was alleged that Mehta engaged in a massive stock manipulation scheme financed by worthless bank receipts, which his firm brokered for "ready forward" transactions between banks.

Mehta was convicted by the Bombay High Court and the Supreme Court of India for his part in a financial scandal valued at inr 100000000000 which took place on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE).

The scandal exposed the loopholes in the Indian banking system and the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) transaction system, and consequently the SEBI introduced new rules to cover those loopholes.

He was on trial for 9 years, until he died at the end of 2001 from a heart attack.