MUMBAI: Hinduja TMT has won its appeal made before the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) against a trading ban order passed by market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in January 2003.

SAT, by its order dated 23 August, lifted the ban imposed on HTMT for the remaining period.

Sebi had passed an order on 11 January 2003 directing HTMT not to deal in securities as an intermediary in any manner for two years (upto 10 January, 2005) following an investigation it conducted into a public issue that group subsidiary Hinduja Finance Corporation Ltd had managed in 1995.

Hinduja Finance was lead manager of a public-cum-rights issue of Subhash Projects & Marketing Ltd in 1995, following which an investigation had been called.

Hinduja TMT successfully argued before SAT that Hinduja Finance had been discontinued by the company for more than five years before the passing of the Sebi order. Since the end of 1997 the company has not been acting as a merchant banker or as a financial intermediary in the capital or the securities market. The company did not renew its license to carry out merchants banking activities after it expired in 1997 October, it had argued in its defence.