With less than six months left on his permissible seven-year deputation with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), executive director S Ramann saw his term coming to an abrupt end on Monday after the government decided to call him back to his parent organisation ? the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG).
According to persons privy to the development, the government order came on Monday after the Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT) -? the coordinating agency on appointments and deputation of government employees ? decided against giving any further extension to Ramann, who is a member of the Indian Audits and Accounts Service. It is believed that the refusal by the government came even as the Sebi chief and a couple of board members of the market watchdog were in favour of Ramann staying on until the end of his tenure and even wrote to the DoPT.
Ramann?s rise within Sebi has been rapid. According to Sebi insiders, there are not many instances of people being appointed EDs after a stint of less than five years with the capital market watchdog. Ramann was in the ?good books? of the brass of Sebi, they say.
Ramann joined Sebi in January 2007 as an officer on special duty (OSD) and was part of the surveillance department. Thereafter, in August 2011, he was promoted as an executive director, in charge of two crucial departments ? market regulation and integrated surveillance. While the market regulation department looks after the regulatory framework for stock exchanges, clearing corporations, depositories and derivative products, the surveillance division is responsible for tracking the market movement on a daily basis and identifying suspicious trading activities.
Ramann was in the middle of framing new rules for clearing corporations, depositories and the manner in which settlement guarantee funds need to be managed ? tasks which will now have to be transferred to another ED. He was also part of Sebi’s high-level committee set up recently to review the insider-trading regulations, apart from being a member of the committee on clearing corporations, the risk-management review committee and the secondary market advisory committee.
