Bhave takes over rein as SEBI Chief

India's markets watchdog gets new chief

18 Feb 2008


Chandrasekhar Bhaskar Bhave took over the reins as the new chief of markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) Monday evening from outgoing chairman Meleveetil Damodaran.

The former chairman of National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL), India's central repository of dematerialised stocks, Bhave hails from Nagpur in Maharashtra.

He is no stranger to SEBI. In 1992, Bhave joined the newly formed SEBI as executive director.

During his stint with SEBI, he was instrumental in conceptualising the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and banning the 'badla' system, an Indian version of futures trading.

Considered a no-nonsense officer, Bhave is an electrical engineer by training and belongs to the 1975 batch of the Indian Administrative Service.

Kicking off his bureaucratic stint as district collector at Nanded in south central Maharashtra, Bhave went on to serve as an undersecretary in the central ministry of finance and deputy secretary in the ministry of petroleum before serving as additional industries commissioner of Maharashtra.

In 1996, Bhave quit the administrative service and joined NSDL as chairman and managing director. He is credited with the introduction of the dematerialised stocks system in the Indian market. NSDL is central repository for such stocks.

A familiar face in financial circles, Bhave locked horns with Damodaran over the initial public offer (IPO) of Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC). It took the Securities Appellate Tribunal to sort out the legal tangle.