How Kapil Wadhawan pulled off the DHFL con for a decade

Two government initiatives for the poor were exploited to siphon thousands of crores to entities connected to the mortgage lender’s promoters.

Kapil Wadhawan was once the darling of the markets and could do no wrong. His company, Dewan Housing Finance Corp. Ltd, was at one point the second biggest mortgage lender after HDFC Ltd, with the loan book of Rs 100,000 crore. Its stock went from Rs 50 in early 2014 to a high of Rs 670 in August 2018. But then everything went off the rails. 

In what can only be described as daylight robbery, the former chairman and managing director of the now bankrupt DHFL, took the financial system, along with the government’s subsidy programme, for a ride. 

As …

Author

Jayshree P. Upadhyay

Jayshree is a former writer at The Morning Context. As journalist, she had nearly a decade of experience across Mint, Business Standard and Bloomberg TV India. The bulk of her career has been devoted to tracking the capital markets regulator, exchanges, regulatory policies, financial scams and corporate governance issues. One of her biggest breaking stories was her incisive coverage of the colocation scam which put the lapses at NSE in the public domain.

jayshree@mailtmc.com