Chandresh Nigam leaves Axis MF, Gopkumar to succeed

Chandresh Nigam leaves Axis MF, Gopkumar to succeed

Axis Asset Management Company (AMC) on Thursday announced that MD and CEO Chandresh Nigam will leave the firm after 10 years at the helm, after requesting not to be considered for reappointment. His term ends on April 30.

According to a release, Nigam had joined Axis AMC on July 1, 2009 as head of equities, and took charge as the MD and CEO on May 1, 2013.

The change of guard comes fresh on the heels of the regulator’s recent interim order on the front-running case, barring 21 entities from accessing the securities markets and directing them to disgorge Rs 30.6 crore in unlawful gains.

Sebi had cracked the whip on the fund house last year after being alerted by its internal surveillance system that trades by certain entities between September 2021 and March 2022 were not executed in the normal course.

The regulator established links through a series of WhatsApp messages, identifying Axis MF’s former chief dealer Viresh Joshi as ‘jadugar’, who was the mastermind of a fraudulent scheme of front-running.

It observed that the scheme entailed placing orders in a manner that the first leg of trades got executed ahead of the orders of Axis MF. Sebi noticed that the frequency of the scheme was not limited to a few stray incidents, but was a consistent occurrence with more frequency, done in order to generate large sums of gains.

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Consequently, Joshi was shown the door in May 2022, along with another fund manager Deepak Agrawal, which was followed by tax raids at Joshi’s residence. These trades were executed by Sumit Desai, a market operator, at Joshi’s behest.

Desai had also introduced Joshi to a Dubai-based individual, Prijesh Kurani, who helped execute these trades.

“…the way Viresh Joshi has conducted himself as a dealer of Axis MF in conceiving a fraudulent scheme and executing the said scheme so meticulously over a sustained period in collusion with other unscrupulous entities to front-run the trades of his very own mutual fund, where approximately 6.6 million unitholders have put an aggregate sum of Rs 2.52 trillion (as on March 31, 2022), smacks of rampant dishonesty and unfairness on the part of Viresh Joshi and his accomplices,” said the order.

Axis MF issued a statement following the Sebi order, saying none of the entities were now connected to the fund house.