The Competition Commission of India has held that the Trustees' Association of India (TAI) and three major debenture trustees — IDBI Trusteeship Services, Axis Trustee Services and SBICAP Trustee Company — violated Sections 3(3)(a) and 3(3)(b) of the Competition Act, 2002 by collectively fixing a minimum benchmark fee for debenture trusteeship services during FY 2020-21 and FY 2021-22, after TAI decided in March 2021 that members would not price below a common floor and monitored quotations to enforce it.
The complaint was triggered by Muthoot Finance after its long-standing trustee quoted a sharply higher fee for a proposed NCD issuance, prompting the finance company to investigate and ultimately complain to CCI. The Commission issued a cease-and-desist order but imposed no monetary penalty, noting the trustees had abandoned the benchmark-alignment practice once the investigation began — while explicitly warning that any recurrence would be treated as aggravated recidivism.
The ruling confirms that professional and intermediary trade associations in India's debt-capital-markets ecosystem can be held liable for price-fixing under the Competition Act even absent a formal, written cartel agreement, and signals to issuers and trustees alike that association-driven fee benchmarking carries real antitrust exposure notwithstanding the no-penalty outcome here.