Corporate Merchant Bankers Ltd is a finance company that has spent three decades moving wherever it saw a gap - first advising companies, then lending to small industries that banks wouldn’t touch, and most recently trading in shares. It was founded in 1994 in Delhi, got its Reserve Bank of India licence as a non-deposit-taking NBFC (a lender that cannot accept public savings) in 1998, and has always operated as a single, lean unit with no subsidiaries or joint ventures. The recurring pattern is reinvention: when one line of business fades, the company shifts its capital and its label to the next opportunity, most dramatically in 2025 when it converted nearly all its debt into equity and brought in a new set of shareholders.
Business segments
A single engine that has changed its fuel three times - from consultancy fees to loan interest to trading gains - always running on the same NBFC licence.
1. Trading and investment in shares: where the company places its capital today
By FY25, the entire business was buying and selling shares for its own account, with no lending income left on the books.
- A portfolio, not a service - the company earns its revenue from gains on shares it holds and trades, not from fees charged to clients; in FY25, every rupee of revenue came from “Other Income” rather than from operations.
- Fair-value bets - some investments are valued at published market prices (Level 1), while unlisted shares and funds are valued using the company’s own models and judgement (Level 3), meaning the balance sheet carries assets whose worth depends on assumptions that are neither supported by observable market transactions nor based on available market data.
- No middlemen in the supply chain - the company has no suppliers, no production process and no physical supply chain, consistent with a business that simply deploys its own money into financial assets.
2. Lending to small industries: the engine that carried the company for two decades
The company made loans to micro and small businesses that banks could not or would not serve - financing everything from machinery to livestock - and earned interest on every rupee.
- Filling the collateral gap - banks typically demand property or other security before lending to small firms; this company stepped into that void by appraising credit where banks could not, targeting the unmet demand of tiny industrial and trading enterprises.
- Interest income, not fees - revenue came from interest calculated on a time-proportion basis using the effective interest method, meaning the company recognised income steadily over the life of each loan rather than upfront.
- A loan book that shrank to zero - by FY23 the company still carried long-term loans of about Rs 2.3 crore, but trade receivables of Rs 41 lakh were almost entirely overdue beyond six months; by FY25, operational revenue had disappeared entirely.
- No borrowed fuel - the company did not take any loans from banks or financial institutions during FY24, and it has never accepted public deposits, so its lending was funded entirely by its own capital and whatever unsecured loans promoters or others provided.
3. Financial consultancy: the original business that gave the company its name
In its earliest years, the company advised corporates on capital-market transactions and earned fees for its expertise - a service business that left no assets on the books.
- Advice as the product - the company’s stated activity under the official industry classification was “Financial consultancy services” through FY21, meaning it was paid for guidance on things like structuring deals and raising capital rather than for deploying its own money.
- The capital-market connection - even as the company moved into lending, the industry structure relevant to its operations remained “mainly concerned with the capital market,” suggesting that its loan clients and advisory relationships overlapped in the world of listed and unlisted companies.
Risk management: the control room behind every engine
A formal framework covering credit, market, operational and fraud risk sits under a designated risk head, with separate policies for each line of business.
- Credit risk by the rulebook - the company sets prudential limits, portfolio criteria and exceptional approval thresholds for every lending activity, and it watches concentration risk by counter-party, industry, region and borrower group so that no single default can sink the book.
- Expected-loss accounting - trade receivables are provided for using lifetime expected credit losses under the “simplified approach,” while other financial assets are tested for significant credit deterioration to decide whether a 12-month or lifetime loss provision is needed.
- Fraud and operations under watch - a senior management committee reviews operational risk periodically, and a dedicated fraud risk management team exists to catch wrongdoing before it becomes a loss.
- Internal audit as the backstop - an internal audit process feeds reports to management and the Audit Committee, designed to ensure that financial reporting is accurate, resources are protected, and laws are complied with.
Group structure and partners
The company was once part of a promoter-led group with a holding company and a subsidiary; by FY25 it stood entirely alone, and immediately after year-end a debt-to-equity conversion reshaped its ownership.
- The old promoter circle - as of FY21, Cosmos Industries Limited held 60% of the shares, and together with individual promoters Bhavna Yadav and Deepak Yadav, the promoter group controlled 75% of the company.
- The subsidiary that vanished - Solis Industries Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary, was inoperative with nil turnover and nil net worth, and an application was made for its striking off in December 2022, leaving the parent with no subsidiaries, joint ventures or associates by FY24.
- The 2025 reset - in June 2025 the board approved a preferential share issue to convert Rs 82 crore of outstanding unsecured loans into equity at Rs 16.08 per share, plus a further Rs 15 crore cash issue at the same price; by November 2025, twelve non-promoter entities had been allotted shares, pushing the paid-up capital from Rs 3.3 crore to Rs 63.4 crore and bringing in an entirely new set of shareholders.
- The listing and registry backbone - the company’s shares trade on the BSE and the Metropolitan Stock Exchange, it maintains connectivity with both NSDL and CDSL depositories, and its share registry is handled by Skyline Financial Services in Delhi.