The authority judgment stated: "It is difficult to see how an investor like UTI, which has the wherewithal of market research and analysis to advise it in its market decisions, was not aware of the press reports and can claim total ignorance of the impending merger of HLL and BBLIL."

Quoting SEBI's order, the judgment stated that the chief general manager of UTI, when asked whether he was aware from whatever source that BBLIL might be merged with HLL, replied that he was not at all aware of any such proposal.

It said that in the face of a large number of press reports in that period, there were strong reasons to believe that the impending merger, though not formally acknowledged or published, was in one sense generally known and UTI's denial of knowledge could not be implied to mean that the market,in general, had no information in this regard. It also pulled up UTI for not approaching SEBI in the first instance soon after it felt that HLL, because of insider trading, had gained an unfair price advantage in the purchase of scrips of BBLIL from UTI.