Harshad Shantilal Mehta was an Indian stockbroker. His involvement in the 1992 Indian securities scam made him infamous as a market manipulator. He earned the nickname of the ‘Big Bull’ because he was said to have started the run-to-bank lending, which resulted in the rise in the Bombay Exchange’s stock price. He died in 2001 at the age of 47.
About Harshad Mehta in brief
Harshad Shantilal Mehta was an Indian stockbroker. His involvement in the 1992 Indian securities scam made him infamous as a market manipulator. Of the 27 criminal charges brought against him, he was only convicted of four, before his death at age 47 in 2001. He was on trial for 9 years, until he died at the end of 2001. Some financial experts believe that he didn’t commit any fraud; he simply exploited loop holes in the system. The scandal exposed the loopholes in the Indian banking system and the Bombay Stock Exchange transaction system, and consequently the SEBI introduced new rules to cover those loopholes. He earned the nickname of the ‘Big Bull’ because he was said to have started the run-to-bank lending, which resulted in the rise in the Bombay Exchange’s stock price. He died in 2001 at the age of 47, and was buried in a private ceremony in Worli, a suburb of Mumbai. He is survived by his wife, two children and a step-daughter.
He had a son and two step-grandchildren. He also has a stepson and a daughter who are now in their early 20s. He has been described as a ‘tough guy’ and a ‘good guy’ by the media. He worked for a number of brokerage firms in Mumbai, including Harjivandas Nemidas Securities and New India Assurance Company Limited. In 1990, he began trading heavily in the shares of Associated Cement Company. The price of shares in the cement company eventually rose from ⁹200 to nearly ₹9,000 due to a massive spate of buying from a set of brokers including mehta. He 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. During this period, especially in 1990–1991, the media portrayed a heightened deified image of MehtA, calling him ‘The Big Bull’
You want to know more about Harshad Mehta?
This page is based on the article Harshad Mehta published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 17, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
