The Finance Ministry has indicated that it will not support relaxing the deadline for maintaining minimum public shareholding norms.
All listed companies have to bring their minimum public shareholding to 25 per cent by June, 2013.
This response has come at a time when industry chamber, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has asked SEBI to postpone the 25 per cent minimum public shareholding norm in companies to 2015.
The Economic Affairs Secretary, Mr R. Gopalan, said, “We don't see very strong arguments in postponing.” This rule was made in 2010 and companies were given three years to comply, he pointed out.
CII had argued that the average fund raising in the last five years on Indian bourses was Rs 30,000 crore. This was less than the Rs 34,860 crore required by 162 companies to comply with the norms by June, 2013. It also pointed out that the alternative methods, of institutional placement programmes and offer-for-sale through stock exchanges, were yet to stabilise.