[Ambika Mehrotra is a Manager in the Corporate Law Services Division of Vinod Kothari & Company] Background to the SEBI Settlement Mechanism The settlement mechanism for violation of laws related to securities had been introduced in India in 2007. Further, in order to factor in various issues and aspects relating to its enforcement mechanism, the Securities and Exchange Board of India...
Disclosure Regarding Significant Beneficial Owners: Another Stride from SEBI
[Ambika Mehrotra is a Manager at Vinod Kothari & Company in its Corporate Law Services Division] In the interest of investors in the securities market and with a view towards better corporate governance, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”) has taken steps to widen the scope of compliances for listed entities. Accordingly, to bring in more transparency for investors, SEBI has...
Prospects of Regulation of Initial Coin Offerings by SEBI
[Aishwarya Singh is a 5th year law student at Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat] The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had, by way of a circular, ring-fenced banks from dealing with cryptocurrencies. However, the status of cryptocurrencies in India is far from decided. The RBI circular has been recently challenged in the Supreme Court. On the other hand, the Government had also constituted an Inter...
Analysing Some Insider Trading Implications For M&A Transactions
[Priya Garg is a 5th year student at West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (WBNUJS), Kolkata] Consequences of Creating the Due Diligence Exception to the Bar on the Communication of UPSI For the first time, under regulation 3 of the SEBI (Prohibition of Insider Trading) Regulations, 2015 (“PIT, 2015”), communication of unpublished price sensitive information (“UPSI”) per se has...
Will SEBI Succeed in Creating a Vibrant Bond Market?
[Rajeev Jhawar is an Executive at Vinod Kothari Consultants Pvt Ltd] As part of the budget this year, India sought to expand its bond market beyond the traditional ambit of sovereign debt. Pursuant to this, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has initiated efforts to diversify borrowings of Indian corporates by mandating them to raise at least a quarter of their incremental funds from...
Analysis of ‘Bulk Deal’ under the SEBI Takeover Code
[Tanmay Purohit and Mayank Sen are 4th year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) students at School of Law, Raffles University, Neemrana (Rajasthan)] The Securities Appellate Tribunal (“SAT”) on 28 May 2018, while deciding on appeals against several orders of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”) in Tarun Jiwarajka v. Securities and Exchange Board of India, undertook a comprehensive interpretation...
Delhi High Court Circumscribes SEBI’s Power to Initiate Adjudication Proceedings
Independent regulators must demonstrate their independence and fairness in their actions in order to maintain credibility. For this, the process by which they carry out their actions must be robust. This applies equally to India’s securities regulator, SEBI, which is the earliest independent regulator in the post-liberalisation era and one that heralded the advent of an array of similar...
Direct Listing of Indian Companies on Foreign Exchanges and Vice Versa: A New Era for Fundraising
[Tanaya Desai is a 5th-year student at ILS Law College, Pune] Introduction In its press release dated June 12, 2018, the Securities Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”) expressed its intention to consider facilitating unlisted companies incorporated in India to directly list their equity share capital on foreign exchanges and, concurrently, of foreign firms on Indian exchanges. In furtherance of the...
Analysing the Change in Law Regarding Issuance of Sweat Equity Shares
[Vartika Tiwari is a 3rdYear student of National Law Institute University, Bhopal and is on the Editorial Board of NLIU Law Review] On 16 January 2016, the Government launched the “Startup India”campaign and ever since it has been making constant efforts to promote startups and make the country business friendly. There is no denying the fact that India has come a long way since then. In fact, it...
SEBI Informal Guidance on Foreign Portfolio Investments in Unlisted Non-Convertible Debentures
[Kosha Thaker is a corporate lawyer with a law firm in Mumbai] Background Earlier, registered foreign portfolio investors (“FPIs”) were permitted to invest only in listed non-convertible debentures (“NCDs”) or to-be listed non-convertible debentures (i.e. if the NCDs were listed within a period of 15 days from such investment). There was, however, a special carve out for FPIs investing in...
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