Subhash Chandra: “Negative forces impacting the valuation of ZEE”

ZEE Entertainment Enterprises Limited promoter, Subhash Chandra had written to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on 16th January to express his concerns about Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) of scuttling the $10 billion merger deal with Sony’s India unit, Culver Max Entertainment Limited.

In a letter published on a number of news websites, Chandra informed Sitharaman that he had also wrote to the chairperson of SEBI. The letter said, “I am not suggesting that SEBI should not investigate, if they have doubts of any kind. The company and all other people are cooperating in the investigation, even the department has also summoned an ex-director, questioning him for over 4 hours.”

He said, “I am writing this letter to bring to your kind notice the efforts going on to scuttle investment/merger transaction, where Sony of Japan is supposed to invest $1.5 billion.

“I am not suggesting that Sebi should not investigate if they have doubts of any kind. My concern is the timing of this new notice, and the urgency of the same since it matches with the merger completion timeline of ZEE and Culver Max,” he added.

He further stated, “I firmly believe that issuing a notice to the former directors of ZEE at this stage, appears to be an exercise to sensationalise the matter through media platforms. I had expressed my concerns earlier as well, in a letter to SEBI in November 2018 (copy enclosed for ready reference) over negative forces impacting the valuation of ZEE, but my requests went unnoticed,” he said in the letter.

The deal between ZEE and Sony merger was called off a week after Chandra’s letter, which led to large losses for ZEE on the stock market.

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