[Priyanka Sunjay is an associate at L&L Partners Law Offices. The author thanks Jay Parikh and Varun Kumar for their inputs] On 22 October 2019, the Securities Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”) issued a circular titled ‘Framework for Listing of Commercial Paper’ (“SEBI Circular”) in order to enable listing and trading of commercial papers on stock exchanges. This poses certain important...
Extraterritorial Compliance with Corporate Governance Norms
[Shubham Gupta is a 4th law student at Institute of Law, Nirma University, Ahmedabad] The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has elucidated its position with the respect to the extra-territorial application of its corporate governance norms. In a recent informal guidance in the matter of KCP Limited, SEBI interpreted regulation 24(1) of the SEBI (Listing Obligations and Disclosure...
Liability of Issuers for Misleading Advertisement in a Public Issue of Securities
[Neha Sinha is a 3rd Year B.A. LL.B. student at National University of Study and Research in Law (NUSRL), Ranchi] In an order dated February 26, 2020, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) imposed penalty on Muthootu Mini Financiers Ltd. (MMFL) in a matter relating to misleading advertisement made to the public at large regarding the issue of debt securities. The matter was decided by...
SEBI Introduces Greater Transparency in the AIF Space
[Vaneesa Agrawal is the founder and Rishi Ahuja an associate at Thinking Legal] The Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”) has, through a Circular dated February 5, 2020 (“Circular”), issued disclosure standards for the growing Alternative Investment Funds (“AIFs”) space. The Circular was preceded by a Consultation Paper dated December 4, 2019. SEBI has introduced performance...
SEBI’s Stewardship Code for Institutional Investors
[Pammy Jaiswal is a Partner at Vinod Kothari and Company] The activism of institutional investors was experienced for the very first time in Life Insurance Corporation v. Escorts Ltd., 1986 AIR 1370. While the Bombay High Court initially held that the role of the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) is unconstitutional and mala fide, the Supreme Court allowed the LIC’s appeal and specifically stated...
SEBI Portfolio Management Regulations, 2020: Towards an Investor Friendly Regime
[Anukrati Mishra is a final year B.A. LLB (Business Law Hons) student at Institute of Law, Nirma University, Ahmedabad] On 16 January 2020, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) undertook the first overhaul of the regulations governing portfolio management services (PMS) in over two decades by issuing the SEBI (Portfolio Managers) Regulations, 2020. The new regulations have been...
SEBI Guidelines for Rights Issue of REIT Units
[Rongeet Poddar is a 5th year student at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences] Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT) can be defined as entities that own properties in the real estate sector and finance their development. Structurally, a REIT is identical to an ordinary trust. The real estate properties are owned by the REIT. Companies or limited liability partnerships (LLPs)...
Impact of Defaults by Stockbrokers: Are Investors the Biggest Losers?
[Shivam Tiwari is a final year law student pursuing B.A. LL.B (Business Law Hons.) at National Law University, Jodhpur. This post was earlier published in the Indian Review of Corporate and Commercial Laws] The Indian financial market has witnessed an increasing number of defaults by stockbrokers in the past few years. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”) has debarred brokers like...
SEBI’s Denial of Relief to Pledgees in the Karvy Case
We had last month discussed the ex parte ad interim order passed by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) wherein the regulator found that Karvy Stock Broking Limited (KSBL) had wrongfully pledged securities belonging to its clients to various lenders in exchange for funds borrowed. Since then, four lenders, (i) Bajaj Finance Limited, (ii) ICICI Bank Limited, (iii) HDFC Bank Limited...
Front Running and Circumstantial Evidence (Matrimonial Websites Including)
Securities frauds such as insider trading and front running raise insurmountable hurdles for regulators because there is often no evidence, not even a smoking gun. Hence, regulators bear the burden of painstakingly piecing together several bits of circumstantial evidence that, as a whole, might be sufficient to convince a court or tribunal of the elements of a breach of the appropriate...
Recent Comments