The National Stock Exchange (NSE), the country’s largest bourse by profits, may have to re-file its papers for its nearly ₹10,000-crore IPO after addressing the issues related to co-location matter, SEBI chief Ajay Tyagi indicated on Monday.
Market regulator SEBI had recently gone in for forensic audit of the co-location matter, which related to alleged preferential access given by NSE to some brokers. This has raised doubts as to whether the proposed IPO would get delayed.
Describing the NSE co-location issue as a “serious matter”, Tyagi said that it was for the bourse to decide whether they need to file revised financial statements and Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP).
“If I was an issuer I will see that these are addressed and then only go back to DRHP,” Tyagi said on the sidelines of SCOPE event.
He was replying to a query on whether NSE needed to refile the DRHP now that SEBI has begun looking at the NSE co-location matter afresh.
Asked whether it was a statutory requirement to file revised DRHP, Tyagi said that “I think they (NSE) themselves will do it”.
SEBI had recently decided to undertake forensic audit on its own and not rely on the one done by the stock exchange through professional services firm Deloitte. It may be recalled that NSE had in December last year filed its draft prospectus for the public offer.
The approval for the IPO has been hanging fire as SEBI has not still resolved the co-location matter. NSE is also now learnt to be trying to reach a settlement of the case through consent mechanism.
Meanwhile, NSE is quite hopeful of hitting the market before year-end and would do whatever is required under the law to do the initial public offering (IPO), sources privy to the developments said. Any re-filing of the papers, if required under law, would be done without delaying the IPO, they said.