[Chandragupt is a 5th year B.A.,LL.B.(Hons.) student and Varnika Pasricha is a 5th year B.B.A.,LL.B.(Hons.) student, both at the Jindal Global Law School] The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Substantial Acquisition of Shares and Takeovers) Regulations 2011 [“SAST Regulations”] envisage two types of offers – mandatory open offers and voluntary open offers. While mandatory open offers are...
Digital Assets and the Case to Redefine “Securities” under Indian Law
[Harsh N Dudhe and Pranay Bhardwaj are Year IV Students at NALSAR, Hyderabad] On June 1, 2022, the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York had alleged charges of wire fraud and money laundering in connection with a scheme to commit insider trading in non-fungible tokens (NFTs). In this indictment in United States of America v. Nathaniel Chastain, it was stated that Nathaniel...
SAT Expands the Scope of Exonerating Circumstances for Insider Trading
[Shubh Arora is a fourth year student at National Law University, Delhi] The Securities Appellate Tribunal (the “Tribunal”), in its ruling in Rajeev Sheth v. SEBI (19 April 2022), quashed the order of a Whole Time Member (“WTM”) of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”). The WTM found the Chairman of Tara Jewels Ltd., Mr. Rajeev Sheth, and his daughters, to have indulged in insider...
Insider Trading: Evolving a New Standard of Proof
[Shruti Rajan is a Partner at Trilegal. With research assistance from Vidhi Shah, Associate, Trilegal] A lot has been said (including in this Blog) on the recent Supreme Court decision in the matter involving PC Jewellers (Balram Garg v. Securities and Exchange Board of India, 19 April 2022), where the Court has recast the standard operating protocol used by the Securities and Exchange Board of...
Amendments and Relaxations to Pave the Way for the LIC IPO
[Arjya B. Majumdar teaches Securities Regulation and related subjects at the Jindal Global Law School. With acknowledgements to the immensely helpful discussions with Mr Sayantan Dutta, Partner, Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas] On 27 April 2022, the Life Insurance Corporation of India (‘LIC’) filed its Red Herring Prospectus (‘RHP’) with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (‘SEBI’) for its...
Electronic Gold Receipt: A Virtual Gold
[Darshana Gaggar is an associate at Mindspright Legal] The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) proposed a legal framework for the formation of a spot exchange for trading gold, hoping to use India’s disproportionate physical market power to allow gold to be traded in the financial market as well. Trading of gold in the financial market would be considered as another way of...
Supreme Court Clarifies Evidentiary Burden in Insider Trading Cases
The issue of the burden of proof of the securities regulator in insider trading cases has been a vexed one. This is particularly because direct evidence is often hard to come by, and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has to resort to circumstantial evidence. The jurisprudence thus far has borne some recognition of the practical difficulties surrounding the regulator’s evidentiary...
The Applicability of Insider Trading Regulations to Pooled Investment Vehicles
[Sikha Bansal is a Partner and Aisha Begum Ansari a Manager at Vinod Kothari & Co] From a surveillance and compliance perspective, the SEBI (Prohibition of Insider Trading) Regulations, 2015 (‘PIT Regulations’) focus on designated persons (DPs). Trading in securities of the listed company by DPs is sought to be “regulated, monitored and reported” by the Code of Conduct (regulation 9 read with...
ESG Rating Providers: Analyzing India’s Proposed Regulatory Framework
[Paridhi Jain is a 5th year B.B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student at Symbiosis Law School, Noida] Once a niche market for investors, environmental, social, governance (“ESG”) investing has grown over the past few years. The pandemic is being referred to as a “sustainability” crisis and one that has re-invigorated focus on climate change, acting as a wake-up call for investors to prioritize a more...
Voluntary Separation of Chairperson and MD/CEO Roles: Analysing SEBI’s Recent Move
[Priankita Das is an undergraduate student pursuing B.A. LL.B. (Business Law Hons.) at Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University, Lucknow] By way of its board meeting on February 15, 2022, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”) amended its mandate on the separation of the roles of chairperson and managing director/chief executive officer (“MD/CEO”) of listed companies to be...
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