Bombay High Court Dismisses Petitions Against SEBI Approval of WeWork India IPO

The Bombay High Court has held that the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) acted with due care and caution while clearing WeWork India's draft IPO papers.

The court added that “the role of SEBI in this regard would only be supervisory in nature” and that courts “should be slow to substitute their own wisdom in place of the actions of SEBI.”

The court rejected allegations of regulatory negligence, noting that the market watchdog followed proper procedures in reviewing the co-working company's public offering documents.

While dismissing both petitions, the court held that Bansal had approached it with “unclean hands” by omitting replies he had received from WeWork India and the BRLMs. Bansal was ordered to pay ₹1 lakh as legal costs, whereas no costs were imposed on the second petitioner, Hemant Kulshrestha.

[Hemant Kulshrestha & Vinay Bansal v. Securities and Exchange Board of India]