As quant trading firm Jane Street faces regulatory heat in India, corporate filings show that its two local units—JSI Investments and JSI2 Investments—appear to be thinly staffed and are effectively controlled by foreign executives.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India, in a July 3 order, accused the firm of prima facie market manipulation, bringing its India operations under scrutiny amid rising concerns over offshore control in sensitive market activity. The regulator ordered the impounding of alleged illegal gains worth Rs 4,843 crore.
JSI Investments lists three directors, of whom two are of foreign nationality. Edward James Wieser, who also serves as a contact person for Jane Street’s Hong Kong and South Korea operations, and Stephen James Ward, about whom little public information is available. The third director, Shradha Bharat Shah, is the firm’s head of compliance and serves as whole-time director. She is head of compliance for JSI Investments.
The other unit, JSI2 Investments, also has three directors of whom, Shah is a common director. John Mackenzie is the second director of JSI2. According to Linkedin, he is also a director of Jane Street Europe and heads their legal & Compliance vertical for Europe. The third director is Saksham Bhalothia who works for business development vertical of Jane Street Hong Kong.
An email sent to Jane Street remained unanswered.
One of the key contentions of Sebi was that these two India entities were often placing contra-bets compared to the foreign entities of Jane Street who were licensed to trade in India through the foreign portfolio investment (FPI) route. Sebi also said although the Indian entities were separately incorporated in India, they were controlled by Jane Street global operations.
According to Sebi's investigation, Jane Street indulged in a sophisticated pattern of trading that the was manipulative. Jane Street is accused of engaging in index manipulation strategies between January 2023 and March 2025. One key strategy identified by Sebi in its probe involved aggressive buying of Bank Nifty constituent stocks and futures in the morning sessions to artificially inflate index prices. Simultaneously, the firm would build large short positions in index options.
Later in the day, Jane Street would then aggressively offload these acquired stocks, causing the index to decline and profiting handsomely from their options positions. Another alleged strategy involved concentrated buying or selling in the final hours of expiry days to swing index levels and maximize gains, according to the Sebi order.
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