JM Financial

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I don’t follow the stock but these are very good names in RE sector and in fact better than those financed by Piramal.

I opine that JM had already forcasted a slower growth but did fare much better during the NBFC crisis. The beating it took says a different story though.

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Dismal set of numbers by JM Financial:

I think it is on expected lines and DHFL and Edelweiss will fare no better. I find solace in the fact that consolidated business is doing well and hence liquidity won’t be an issue here like IL&fs.

You are right.

The IWS division that deals with capital markets, trading and brokerage is the main culprit in the bad bottom line.

Except that one division all of their divisions have grown and have shown good performance.

Just that, IWS division is 45% of their business.

Can anyone highlight what is the reason for increase in Non-Controlling Interests?

Is it possible that, that growth is from the growth in their minority stake in affordable housing finance company: https://www.vccircle.com/jm-financial-picks-significant-minority-stake-india-home-loan/

Results: https://www.bseindia.com/xml-data/corpfiling/AttachLive/1b23da1e-2233-4376-8b3e-fb93fe93320e.pdf

Can someone please tell me why the numbers look good when we see INDAS numbers compared to the numbers in PL statement? Thank you.

I had attended the concall of JM Financial for Q4FY19. Some of the key points of the concall are given below:

• 72% loan comprises of wholesale mortgages. Grew by 9.4% yoy. 7.3% comprises of capital market lending. 53% degrowth on yoy basis. Largely funded through CP. 16.4% comprises of corporate lending. Registered 15.6% de-growth on yoy basis. 4.1% comprises of retail mortgages. 34.5% yoy growth.
• Gross NPA – 0.7%. Consolidated Debt:Equity is 1.9 times. During the quarter we acquires 2.18% in JM ARC.
• Borrowing mix – 73% long term borrowing and 27% short term borrowing. CP borrowing reduced to 23% from 37% of total borrowing as on September 30, 2018. Raised 1000 crore through public issue of NCD.
• Mortgage lending business – Business contributed 48% of group’s PBT. PAT grew to 190 crore. Gross debt to equity stands at 1.9 times while net debt to equity is 1.74 times.
• ARC – AUM grew by 3% on yoy basis. JM contribution to SR increased by 48% on a yoy basis. PAT from this segment grew by 95% on a yoy basis.
• AMC – segment revenue of 94 crore and 57 crore of PBT. PAT reduced by 25% on a yoy basis.
• Cost of funds stood at 9.2% compared to 8.7% on a yoy basis.
• Wholesale lending business – Out of total residential projects, how many are operational and how many are under construction? How much is construction finance and how much is LRD? How do we ringfence the cash flows? Large part of our projects are operations – 70 – 75%. We don’t do LRD as part of our LRD as its low yielding. Cash flows for under construction projects – all deposits are deposited in RERA account once receipt is made from consumers. Split is made for repayment of loan and further construction.
• Exposure to Lodha? And exposure to 10,000 per square feet? Not worried about Lodha. Have to come back to you separately for the figure.
• Wealth management business – Today all along we have been profitable. Cost to income ratio is 65% for net revenue. Yields for asset under advice – net yield works out to be 13 bps. Gross yields are 15 bps. 54 wealth managers – average vintage of wealth managers – more than 40 people in the group would have experience of more than 10 years on capital management side. Many of them would have spend 8 – 10 years with us.
• Large redemption in AUM in AMC during the year? Outlook for it? Negotiations with distributors? AUM has dropped due to redemption in liquid scheme on yoy basis and some drop in arbitrage business. Large part of it is redemption in arbitrage schemes.
• Net new money in wealth management? Not much. Long term outlook is pretty good but short term is pretty cautious. Lot of redemption is happening in AMC. 15 – 20% growth for FY20. Net new money 15% growth. Fall in the value during the year. Liquid funds and equity funds have reduced.
• Geographic of the loan portfolio? RE split – 37.3% Mumbai, 27.4% Bangalore, 9.6% Chennai, 7.4% NCR, 2.88% Hyderabad.
• ARC – Been a drag on resolutions through NCLT? ARC – delays in lot of resolutions. Some of it is NCLT resolutions. Delay in 70 – 80% resolutions under way. Profitability growing in ARC in a meaningful way? If there is no competitive bidding, there is delay. Also, promoter causing a delay in resolution leads to delay in process. Two principal reason, there is delay in resolution. Don’t see long term impact on profitability of ARC business. IBC is much better than earlier.
• NCR – Too much of news flows on many accounts being going to NLCT and liquidity is stretched. That’s the reason we chose to stay from it. Lot of land landing and low LTV lending. NCR has highest share of risky lending in terms of low LTV and land financing. Difficult to figure out value of land.
• Net losses in fair value change includes all the investments we have will be done on fair value. This will be done on P&L basis. Some of the security receipt (SR) investment and liquid investments done are major part of it. More driven on security basis. Part of SR investment we hold in ARC. Subject to fair value assessment done by rating agencies. We have a large holding in NSE. Fair value estimate done on it on regular basis. SR will be held till maturity.
• Impairment of financial instrument of -14 crore. Nothing but ECL based assessment. Delta on account of reduction in value of NSE led to difference between reported profit and adjusted profit.
• SMA 2 has been high at 1.5% for 3 quarters in a row. Slowing down our real estate business. Not adding many new clients. We continue to track them. RE is project and sales based. 1.5% SMA number is normal in our business. If someone was SMA 2 account last quarter and there is delay of 1 to 2 months, does it become NPA? Yes, if it continues for 3 months, it becomes NPA.
• Growth over the next 4 quarters?
• Impact coming thorugh from demand side? Some impact coming from demand size. Auto sector being very important. Some demand shock is there. Liquidity scenario is pretty volatile. Still very challenging. Holding significant amount of cash. Holding 2,500 crore cash and we will continue to hold it. Response from banks and NCD issue from retail has shown good demand. Hope to continue with that. Guided 15 – 20% growth in long term in loan book.
• Profitability of ARC? Sequential basis, PAT has come down on a qoq basis? On account of high provisioning. Price estimates by us were higher and now have been toned down. View on latest development of Brookfield acquiring stake in Leela. Matter is in court and cant discuss.
• Short term borrowing 9% and long term financing is 1% higher. New retail NCD – 10.2% for 3 years, 10.5% for 5 years.
• Short term sides, rate fluctuate a lot. 30 – 40 basis points fluctuation. Escalation of interest rates by banks. Borrowing costs will go up. We need to keep decent mix of short term debt. Overall cost of borrowing can increase by 40 – 60 bps during this year – FY20. Real challenge to maintain spreads and have high asset quality. At least able to protect your spreads. Expectations of improvement in liquidity scenario? Lot of events that were concerning over the last 6 months, each of the event has played out or playing out now. Confidence of people to lend below AAA rating is low. Now from this point onwards we are looking to grow our books as compared to de-growing our book when liquidity challenges happened in September.
• 15% growth is easily maintainable from existing clients and adding few new clients in RE book.
• Capital market book seen maximum decline. Outlook? We will take a call after elections. Mid cap and small cap view will be taken in May and June. Capital market to work profitably need low CP rates. CP rates have increased quite a bit. Effective yield on the yields in around 10.4%. Most of the loans are 6 month borrowing on average.
• Wealth management declining on qoq basis? What is leading that? Dip is on account of redemption of liquid funds and FMPs. Outflow has been from credit assets and liquid funds.
• 15 – 20% growth in loan book will come from retail mortgage and wholesale lending.
• Capital market lending – ESOP funding, bond funding, IPO funding. All kind of lending to capital market listed security. All loans are system driven and monitored centrally.
• Cant comment on Investment Banking and Security Business – Too volatile to comment. Will depend on election results.
• Overall money made on ARC business? Revenue in ARC is not dependent on upside and down side. Management fees, interest on restructuring and upside. Management fees is not dependent on resolution. Delay in Brookfield will not impact our profitability. We have already sold our security receipts (SR). Provided for diminution in value of SRs. 100 crore impact of diminution in value of SRs.
• ARC – 1.3 trillion worth assets will come up for auction. Applied to SEBI for AIF of distressed fund. Our own balance sheet exposure will be there and we will use third part assets. Power and infrastructure are major areas where new distressed assets which are coming up but we are not interested in it. We are interested in manufacturing, RE, hotels etc.
• General outlook on capital markets is still cautious. Scenario if demand is slowing, one has to be careful. Auto and consumer have enjoyed phases of high growth for 5 – 7 years. Some impact due to last 2 quarters. Housing sector also facing issues due to liquidity issues in NBFCs. One has to be cautious and if there are lending players which are over levered will have issues. Markets are pretty unsettled.
• Yields – NIMs have increased as capital asset book has come down. It has come down to the lowest level. These are all short term loans as yields are much lower. So if the capital asset book shrinks, NIMs increase as wholesale RE has higher yields.
• Wholesale credit is best played through NBFCs. 15 – 20% growth is easily possible in next 3 – 5 years. If there is an option to do fund based credit we will do it but NBFCs will be there and continue to grow. If the business is good, one can do it in NBFC and fund basis.
• Adjustment on asset side on yields if cost of funds increase by 50 bps? Some adjustments have to be made but we will have to check risks. We are highly risk focussed company. The whole promoter loan business – we weren’t growing the business at lower yields for last 5 – 7 years. Lot of risks taken by MFs. Business is now moving back to NBFCs.
• Are we finding good assets to lend given current liquidity scenario overall and our unlevered portfotio? We are taking best efforts to capitalize but current scenario is not hunky dory.
• Focus a lot on risk management – with banks looking for growing the business, do you think your customers are moving to banks at lower interest rate and lower cover? No. Not at all. Banks have to run a diversified book. They take public funds. They cant take exposure in one asset class or sector. Don’t see bank getting aggressive on wholesale credit. We are extended partners of banks. We don’t see banks being our competitors. Consider MFs and other NBFCs as our competitors.
• Our competitive position getting better given current liquidity challenges faced by NBFCs? In wholesale credit and capital markets our positioning is getting better. We have to be careful how we calibrate growth. However, we still cant grow our book by 35%. We will emerge stronger and better post the current liquidity crisis. Problem in asset quality come over time. They don’t come in a month or two. They come in 6 – 12 months. Over the next 4 – 6 quarters, we will see asset quality comparison of NBFCs.

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Q2FY20 concall notes

  • Last year CP run down from 6500 cr to 2000cr, capital market. Answer- Most challenging time for NBFCs. JM performed exceedingly well. We have been risk averse even when cycle was good. We are not out of woods. We will be conservative for at least 6 more months, rather than growth. Havent sold a single asset, it has been a natural repayments. Cost of borrowing is high at 16-17% when inflation is 4%, it doesn’t make sense when real estate developer margin have shrunk sharply in few years back. Credit is mispriced and debt should be issued at lower levels. We will borrow when interest rates come down. Consolidation in developers: Large developers are seeing this as opportunity to acquire under construction projects, specially in Mumbai area where land is not available.

  • Wholesale lending- We will only fund existing clients to finish the projects 1) as per original construction plan OOR 2) because sales have been slow. 75% of book is project finance. High quality, focus is on completions. Escrows have been strong, sales have held up. We will lend to complete our projects and see further lower debt to equity. We may lend post March/May if situation is good. We have been able to raise capital , liquidity is easing but prob is cost of capital. MF/bank want to lend at higher rates so its hard to grow the book. Dont see things changing in next 6 months, and things can get worse before they get better. Risk aversion, consumption, housing, slowdown in global economy, trade war. Liquidity is still tight. 6-7 large NBFCs downgraded last Q. Hard to tell how worse it can get. We are least leveraged and can ramp up quickly when things change. Will lend when we can borrow at 8-9%, maintaining 5% spread. Lending at current level at 16% will cause problems. Real estate has opportunity at all points of time so opportunity is not an issue, but challenge is lack of confidence, inventory resulting in price pressure.

  • Bangalore, Pune, Kolkata stressed projects got resolved. Bangalore developer brought in equity. Pune was sold to end users.

  • Our avg cover is more than 2x. LGD would be less than 20%.

  • 2-2.5 lakh apartments selling every year. Q2 was a dip on account of financing. Absolute pessimism on street, worst in last 11 years. Demonetization, ReRa, GST since 2013 but liquidity was keeping things better and now liquidity disappeared. Only the sales are helping repayments. HFCs not able to disburse to even eligible people in time. Good transactions available at good yields. Bottoming out now.

  • Not seeing quick revival in capital markets. Can go up in 6 months.

  • Corp lending and promoter lending has done well. Some changes in SEBI norms requires 4x covers for promoter lending. Because of this promoter lending opportunity expanded. Similarly, some NBFCs with ALM mismatch and banks tightened purse for corporate lending. We dont see slowdown here, we will grow this book.

  • Retail mortgage will grow, we have branches for next 1 year. Avg ticket below 20 lakh.

  • Wealth and asset management. Adding people, increase of 30-35%. Focus on pushing growth. Me too AMC, we are not differentiated? Focus is on hidden expertise on credit - AIF credit platform, Private equity. Distribution will grow. Will define the strategy in next 6 months when team is onboard. Growth in PMS/AIF will be higher than pure MF side

  • ARC- Not looking at any new assets. Challenges of timeline of resolution. Were expecting 1000cr recovery by Dec 2018 that have been delayed. Hoping recoveries pickup in nexy 6-9 months. Full team working on recoveries. We will acquire new assets when we recover this 1000cr. Leela has gone through in Q3, money is in account. ARC idea is to take good quality asset that are industry defining. We do assessment that if everything goes bad, can we get our principal. Then in next 5 years, if we restructure, can we get 25% IRR. Sometimes we have to do working capital lending. Leela was as per expectation on XIRR, no further lending was needed.

  • Have we bottomed? We have made higher cautionary provision last quarter. We may do that again. We are stable now and in a fantastic position. Request investors to be patient for next 6-9 months.

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Not seeing any post on this subject since Oct 2019. JM financial seems to be participating in lot of IPO’s and considering that IPO market had been booming since last year, why is JM financial not gaining from it? Stock is training at PE of 8 despite decent quarterly performance and promoter picking up additional stake in Dec’21. Are there any issues with this company?

Disclaimer: Invested (my only hypothesis was that JM financial would benefit from all the IPO’s it has been handling)

Here are some key takeaways from the transcript of JM Financial’s earnings conference call for Q2 and H1 FY '24:

  • Record revenue: JM Financial reported its highest ever quarterly revenue of INR 1,214 crores, driven by strong performance in fees, commission, brokerage, advisory, investment banking, wealth management, and distribution businesses.
  • Diversified loan book: JM Financial’s consolidated loan book grew by 8% year-on-year to INR 15,808 crores, with a balanced mix of wholesale, direct retail, and indirect retail segments. The wholesale mortgage book, which constitutes 50% of the loan book, registered an 8% growth year-on-year.
  • Improved asset quality: JM Financial’s gross NPA ratio improved from 5.1% in Q1 FY '24 to 4.8% in Q2 FY '24, while the net NPA ratio improved from 2.6% to 2.3%. The SMA 2 ratio also declined from 1.9% to 0.5%. The company has taken additional provisions of INR 126 crores in the wholesale mortgage lending business and expects the NPA cycle to peak this year.
  • Strong capital position: JM Financial’s consolidated net worth, excluding minority interest, stood at INR 8,364 crores, translating into a book value of INR 87.6 per share. The debt-to-equity ratio was at 1.5x, with 77% of the borrowings from long-term sources. The company raised INR 1,388 crores through long-term borrowings in H1 FY '24.
  • Positive outlook: JM Financial is optimistic about the future prospects of its businesses, as it leverages its diversified and integrated platform, digital capabilities, market insights, and customer relationships. The company expects to grow its wholesale mortgage book at 18-20% annually, double its investment banking profit in 4 years, and achieve 25-30% growth in its retail and FIFG businesses. The company also aims to pursue newer possibilities and harness emerging opportunities in the financial sector.
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JM Financial has performed very well in all the businesses, particularly investment banking, broking, wealth management and lending. The market has reacted negatively to the recent regulatory action and the mkt price is now even more attractive. As stated by the co in its clarification, the IPO funding business is less than two percent of the overall topline and is unlikely to have an impact.

It would have been better if they conducted a concall, as they have not done after Q3 also. With the new MD Chirag Negandhi, it would have been good occasion to hear what are his plans for the future.

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SEBI barred investment bank JM Financial from leading any new debt offerings. The reason: JM did a few financial gymnastics to inflate subscription numbers. A long read:

Investment banking is notoriously competitive. You’re constantly competing with tens of other banks looking to do deals. In most cases there is little to differentiate you from the bank across the street. You probably hire people from the same set of colleges, suck their souls the same way, and the suckers then move around within the same set of banks.

So if a client comes to you and tells you that he wants to do a plain old vanilla debt offering—what exactly is the differentiator that you’re going to offer? The client company wants to sell bonds to investors, give them a fixed coupon rate, and it wants a bank to prepare the documents, do the disclosures, market the bonds to investors, etc. It doesn’t get simpler than that!

Here’s a possible differentiator. You promise the company that its debt offering will be successful. Say you’ve already received commitments from investors. Mostly things will go fine. It’s a straightforward debt offering, after all. Investors will buy the bonds, you’ll get your fees, and life will go on. Sometimes things will go wrong.

Earlier this month, SEBI issued an order barring investment bank JM Financial from leading any more debt offerings for some time until it finishes an investigation. Here’s what SEBI noticed:

  1. Piramal Enterprises sold bonds worth ₹533 crore ($65 million).
  2. 75% of those bonds were bought by individual investors. 25% from medium-size investors like small companies, partnerships, and the likes. Institutional investors like large banks or insurance companies bought nothing.
  3. The same day that these bonds were listed on the stock exchange, (at least) 1016 investors sold ₹142 crore worth of bonds. 26% of the initial sale.
  4. JM Financial Products, an NBFC owned by JM Financial, bought these bonds. The NBFC paid more than what the bonds were sold for just a few days. It then turned around and sold a large chunk of those bonds to other medium-size investors but for cheaper than even the original price. JMF’s NBFC bought high and sold low!
  5. Only—those 1016 investors? The NBFC was the one that had lent money to those investors to buy those bonds in the first place. Also, the investors came via JM Financial Services, a broker owned by (no surprises here) JM Financial.

That’s a lot of JM Financial companies! And quite a bit of financial gymnastics. The investment banks needed investors, so the broker brought the investors. The investors needed money, so the NBFC lent them money. Then the investors needed buyers for their bonds, so the NBFC bought the bonds. Only to sell them for a loss.

The only takeaway I have from these events is that it takes a village to raise a debt offering.

It takes a village

One of the jobs of an investment bank leading a debt offering—maybe even the most important—is to market the bonds to investors. You’ll call up some pension funds and mutual funds and the likes, ask if they want to buy some hot bonds from Piramal with a 9% yield for 2 years. [1] They might say yes, or they might say no. You note down their interest, ideally you’d even get more commitments than you’d need so that there’s some cushion. That’s also why bond offerings, or even stock sales for that matter, don’t fail. The big buyers are lined up in advance.

Piramal’s bond offering had a total of 0 institutional investors! These are the folks that are supposed to be easier to get. As a banker you’re supposed to have an existing relationship with them. They’re the ones who have the money to actually buy your bonds!

Okay so JM Financial couldn’t convince any institutions to buy the bonds. Hey that’s bad but not the end of the world. It owns a brokerage! And the broker has connections with tons of small investors! So JM Financial probably decided to get its broker to market the bonds to small investors instead. Thousands of them.

Of course, there are a few problems:

  1. It’s not easy to convince a thousand people to do a single thing.
  2. Even if you do convince them to do your thing, unlike large institutional investors, between the time you convince them and the time they actually pay up, they might change their mind.
  3. Retail investors don’t have large sums of money lying around to invest in bonds. These bonds needed at least ₹10 lakh per investor.

(3) is where the NBFC came in. The investors didn’t need to have the money, the NBFC would lend them nearly all of it. [1] JM Financial took care of (2) by opening a separate dedicated bank account for these investors and getting their authorisation to operate those bank accounts.

And to deal with (1)—how do you convince a thousand people to take loans from you and not even allow them to touch their money? You guarantee them an instant profit!

For whatever reason, Piramal’s bonds weren’t really in demand. The company wanted to raise up to ₹1,000 crore [3] and it managed to raise just about ₹533 crore. This was a bond that wasn’t really in demand! If you bought it and then sold it immediately, you’re probably going to have to sell at a discount. Why else would someone buy the bond from you anyway?

But JM Financial had propped up thousands of investors via its broker who wouldn’t really be accepting a loss here. So it gave them a profit. The investors had bought the bonds at ₹1,000 each. JM Financials’s NBFC paid them between ₹1,002–₹1,002.5 per bond.

But, of course, JM Financial didn’t really want those bonds! It had to get rid of them.

Remember when JM Financial tried to line up investors before the sale? It couldn’t convince any large investors to buy them but it did convince some smaller ones to buy ₹131 crore ($16 million) or 25% of the total bonds sold.

One can imagine that there were some more of these investors who were sort-of interested but only if they got a better deal. Now, JM Financial couldn’t just change the yield on these bonds. That would mean going back to get Piramal on board, and you don’t really want to have a tough conversation with your client. So JM Financial probably figured that it could buy these bonds from its own retail investors and sell them to the few fussy investors who wanted a better price. It didn’t have to normalise the price for all investors, while still getting the investors who wanted to buy the bonds at a lower price.

The NBFC sold ₹80 crore ($10 million) of the bonds worth ₹141 crore ($17 million) which it bought from the retail investors at an average price of ₹994, which is ₹6 less than the original price of ₹1000. That’s a 9.32% yield—a good, ~0.3% more than the original yield. [4[

Was all this legal?

Was all this legal? Absolutely not.

SEBI asked JM Financial what’s up—why was JMF’s NBFC buying high and selling low? Here’s its response:

JMFPL-NBFC is “constantly looking at debt papers in the market to do active market making for the purpose of creating liquidity in such debt instruments. Accordingly, JMFPL-NBFC bought the NCDs … from the investors, who wanted to exit to avail other opportunities. The price at which JMFPL

NBFC bought these NCDs ranged from Rs. 100.21 to 100.27 per NCD.
For your information, JMFPL-NBFC has been able to sell a part of the NCDs … bought by it, while it is holding the balance quantity in its books. Typically, the trading desk at JMFPL-NBFC, like in any other trading call, makes decision irrespective of the trading loss or gain depending on the intensity of competition and its allowable risk appetite.”

Which trading desk makes a decision “irrespective of trading loss or gain”? That wouldn’t be a very successful trading desk.

So did JM Financial just lie to SEBI? Am I allowed to say the answer out loud? The answer is yes, most certainly, yes. [5] As a financial institution I’d guess JM Financial did some risk-benefit analysis of lying versus not lying and decided that it made more sense to lie. Let’s see how that turns out.

What makes this episode more interesting is that there aren’t any obvious losers. The 1016 investors didn’t lose money, and may even have made a minuscule amount. [6] Piramal didn’t lose, it sold the bonds it wanted at the price it wanted. JM Financial, sure, lost a bit in trading the bonds at a loss but overall across the investment bank, the broker, and the NBFC earned ₹3.2 crore. Here’s what some senior guy from an NBFC is quoted saying in Mint:

It is a “pedigreed firm” and may come out “not guilty” if Sebi’s record of its orders being overturned by the Securities Appellate Tribunal, is anything to go by, said a senior executive of an NBFC.

“No one lost money, and so what’s the crime,” he asked, requesting not to be quoted.

No one lost money? Except for the medium-size investors that bought the bonds thinking that they were getting good, market-decided interest rate bonds which thousands of investors were falling over each other to buy. What they ended up with was bonds which no large investor wanted to touch and a dealer who was cutting his own deals on the side.

Footnotes

[1] More accurately, the investment bank would go with a price or coupon rate range to judge investor mood, and decide on a final figure after having all the information.

[2] A small number of investors (26) got the loan without any margin. The remaining had 2% as margin.

[3] The base size was ₹200 crore, the amount below which the debt issue would fail, and there was an option to raise an additional ₹800 crore. In theory, the additional amount is a good-to-have but in practice they would expect to raise the full amount.

[4] A minor discount on the buying price makes a significant difference in yield. A ₹1,000 bond at 9% interest bought at ₹994 would have an effective interest rate of 9.05%. More importantly, at maturity, the investors get back the original ₹1,000 as principal even though they had just paid ₹994.

[5] The perk of being an independent writer is that it’s easier to state the obvious.

[6] In theory the investors may not have made a loss, but I’d argue that borrowing ₹10 lakh to make just ₹2,000 is as good as a loss. If SEBI interviews investors and digs into just how JMF’s brokerage convinced investors to agree to such a shitty deal I wouldn’t be surprised if there are stories of incessant pestering and unfulfilled promises.

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