[The following post is contributed by Yogesh Chande, who is a Consultant with Economic Laws Practice, Advocates & Solicitors. Views of the author are personal] In a recent order passed by the Adjudicating Officer of SEBI, an aggregate penalty of INR 2.50 million was imposed on five noticees consisting of Chairman, Vice-Chairman & Managing Director, Executive Directors and the Company...
Securities Laws (Amendment) Ordinance Re-promulgated
Last year, the Securities Laws (Amendment) Ordinance was promulgated (twice in sequence) to grant SEBI additional powers of enforcement on various matters and to expand its regime to regulate Ponzi schemes. After the second Ordinance lapsed, there was concern that the situation would result in disruption of SEBI’s enforcement process. After some dithering, the Securities Laws (Amendment)...
Consolidating Secondary Market Disclosures
(This post has been authored by, and is uploaded on behalf of, Professor Umakanth) As we have previously observed on this Blog, there is a considerable divergence between the requirements of disclosure in the primary markets and those in the secondary markets. While SEBI has progressively expanded the requirements of primary market disclosures through the SEBI (Issue of Capital and Disclosure...
SEBI Announces Corporate Governance Reforms
(The following post has been written by, and uploaded on behalf of, Professor Umakanth) Over a year ago, SEBI had issued a consultation paper that suggested several reforms to corporate governance norms in India that are contained in clause 49 of the listing agreement. The primary purpose of SEBI’s effort was to integrate the stipulations of clause 49 with the then prevailing clauses of the...
SEBI ICDR (Amendment) Regulations, 2014
[The following post is contributed by Shampita Das of Vinod Kothari & Co. She can be contacted at [email protected]] On 4 February 2014, SEBI issued a Notification amending the SEBI (Issue of Capital and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2009 (‘ICDR Regulations’) to make grading of an initial public offer (‘IPO’) by one or more credit rating agencies voluntary by companies. In...
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...
Gold Purchase Schemes and CIS
In 2013, an Ordinance was promulgated to enhance SEBI’s powers to regulate investment pools. The Ordinance introduced section 11AA of the SEBI Act, which details the parameters of a collective investment scheme (CIS). It states that “pooling of funds under any scheme or arrangement” involving a corpus of Rs. 100 crores or more shall be deemed to be a CIS whether or not it is registered with SEBI...
SAT on Insider Trading and the Role of the Compliance Officer
A couple of years ago, we had discussed the order of SEBI’s adjudicating officer imposing a penalty of Rs. 5 lakhs (Rs. 0.5 million) on the compliance officer of Satyam Computer Services Limited. We had noted that this imposed a somewhat unduly onerous obligation on compliance officers and wondered “whether a different outcome would ensue if the compliance officer in Satyam’s case were to go on...
SEBI Proposal for Infrastructure Investment Trusts
Recognizing the deficit in financing infrastructure development in India, SEBI has floated a proposal for a separate investment vehicle for infrastructure investments. Last week, it issued a Consultation Paper on Infrastructure Investment Trusts, on which comments are invited from the public by January 20, 2014. SEBI’s rationale is to ensure that the lack of an effective investment framework does...
Overhauling the Insider Trading Regulations: Part 3
[This is a continuation of two previous posts (here and here) in this series] Trading Plan The Committee has recommended the concept of a trading plan, which is novel in the Indian context but prevalent in some other jurisdictions. This concept has been recommended almost on an experimental basis, to be reconsidered by SEBI based on the initial experience. Such a trading plan has been found to be...
Recent Comments