Insider trading rules: Infosys gets Sebi warning on SDD records

Market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has issued a warning to Infosys after finding the IT major in violation of the insider trading rules. In its filing to the exchanges, Infosys informed about receiving a warning letter from the watchdog on August 8, Tuesday.

While the company has claimed that there was no impact on financial, operation or other activities of the listed entity following the administrative warning letter, it said that the violations have been viewed "seriously by Sebi".

The company informed about the development in a filing to the exchanges during market hours on Wednesday. The stock was trading marginally higher around 3 pm.


Sebi issued an administrative order to Infosys on August 3, 2023, after finding that certain entries were logged with a delay in the Structured Digital Database (SDD) maintained by Infosy under SEBI (Prohibition of Insider Trading) Regulations, 2015.

"The above violations have been viewed seriously by Sebi. Therefore, the Company Secretary was warned, and henceforth advised to be careful with respect to the maintenance of SDD," the exchange filing said.

Meanwhile, in its defence Infosys said that "during FY2020-21 due to the ongoing Covid -19 pandemic, most of the workforce was working from their respective homes and not from the office premises. Therefore, it was logistically difficult to coordinate and maintain these records. While the information pertaining to UPSI during such period was available within INFY, it seems that updating of such information in the SDD system was delayed".

"As a good governance practice, INFY is now in the process of internal due diligence in exercising completeness of SDD records," the filing said further.

However, Sebi did not accept the response given by Infosys.