Background: History Repeats Itself The Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”) has in recent year initiated actions pertaining to the alleged lack of accurate disclosures in prospectuses issued by companies in public offerings of securities. One high profile case involved the initial public offering (“IPO”) of DLF Limited wherein SEBI issued an order restraining DLF, its directors and CFO...
SEBI Adjudication Order: Disclosure of Encumbrances Over Shares
The SEBI (Substantial Acquisition of Shares and Takeovers) Regulations, 2011 (the “SAST Regulations”) contains provisions in Reg. 31 that requires promoters of a company to disclose to the company and the stock exchanges the details of shares encumbered by them and also any invocation or release of encumbrance. The genesis of the requirement to disclose pledge and other encumbrances arose after...
It’s the “Material” Things That Matter: Disclosures under the New SEBI Regulations
[The following guest post is contributed by Yogesh Chande, Partner and Malek-ul-Ashtar Shipchandler, Associate, at Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas. Views expressed herein are personal and solely that of the authors. A related post by Somasekhar Sundaresan is available here.] Background The Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”) notified the SEBI (Listing Obligations and Disclosure...
Materiality and Disclosure Under Clause 36 of the Listing Agreement
[The following guest post is contributed by Supreme Waskar, who is a corporate lawyer] By an order passed earlier this month, an adjudicating officer of SEBI imposed a fine of Rs. 2 crores on New Delhi Television Ltd. (“NDTV”) for failure to promptly disclose material information to stock exchanges under clause 36 of the listing agreement. Facts of the case On February 21, 2014, NDTV had received...
SAT Order in the DLF Case: Controlling SEBI’s Punitive Vehemence
[In an earlier post, I had offered some initial overview and commentary on the SAT Order in the DLF IPO Case. In the following post, Vinod Kothari offers another perspective that focus on certain specific aspects of the order and analyzes their impact on SEBI’s role as an enforcer of securities regulation. The author can be contacted at [email protected].] The order of the Securities...
SAT Order in the DLF IPO Case
As readers may recall, the adequacy of disclosures in the IPO prospectus pertaining to DLF Limited was called into question in a series of investigations by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). The process culminated in SEBI passing an order on October 10, 2014 finding that the disclosures were inadequate and thereby restraining DLF, its directors and CFO from buying or selling...
SEBI Reforms – Part 3: From Listing Agreement to Listing Regulations
In most jurisdictions, several aspects of corporate governance and disclosures for listed companies are regulated through stock exchange listing requirements. These apply only to listed companies, and they are enforced by the stock exchanges. Operating as conditions to continuous listing, one of the enforcement mechanisms used is the threat (sometimes carried out) of delisting the securities...
Disclosure of “Encumbrances” on Shares
Recently, the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) had to deal with two separate situations pertaining to the disclosure of pledge or other encumbrance over shares. In an order discussed earlier today, the SAT found that the acquisition of shares by a public financial institution through the invocation of a pledge was required to be disclosed in accordance with SEBI’s Takeover Regulations...
Penalty for Late Disclosure of Shareholding
Last week, an adjudicating officer of SEBI issued an order imposing an aggregate penalty of Rs. 50 lakhs (Rs. 5 million) on certain promoter entities of Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) for delayed filing of disclosures regarding the shareholding of such entities under the SEBI takeover regulations. It came to SEBI’s notice that there were delayed filings of shareholding disclosures for certain...
Monitoring Secondary Market Disclosures
One of the concerns regarding the corporate disclosure regime is that while the primary market disclosure requirements (e.g. for a prospectus) are extensive and stringent, the secondary market disclosures by companies that are already listed on the stock exchanges are far from being elaborate. In order to bridge this gap, SEBI has been taking steps to enhance the disclosure requirements in the...
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