The market regulator Securities Exchange Board of India(SEBI) today stated it plans to revamp the insider trading norms benchmarking it with best practices in other markets.
"A committee of experts will be shortly appointed to review its provisions. By benchmarking it with best practices from other markets in the world, we will come out with a new insider trading norms within a year," said U.K.Sinha, SEBI Chairman.
Addressing a large investor community, he said SEBI is seeking to reform the insider trading norms aimed at protecting the interest of people. "We are not seeking any additional powers from the Government but are keen to make it better by providing for deterrence," he added.
Two-thirds of the IPOs which hit the market in the last two years are quoting below their offer price. Therefore, SEBI is seeking to fix the responsibility on the promoters and merchant bakers to the issue.
"Since SEBI approves the price and the issue, it is our responsibility to protect investors. Therefore a pre-market call option has been provided," he said.
Referring to the SEBI’s focus on market surveillance, he said it has a mechanism to constantly monitor the market movements and action initiated whenever there is violation. However, he wanted the investor and broking community to alert them of any manipulations in the market.
The SEBI Chief said that a probe has already been initiated on the crash of some mid-cap stock on the bourses on February 25 (Monday).
To help the investing community, he said the KYC (know your customer) norms will be standardised. He earlier opened a regional office at Hyderabad. These regional offices help reach out to people offering services close to them.
These include facilitation for IPOs of up to Rs 100 crore.
Transfer of physical shares
Several investors raised concerns about the difficulties they faced in terms of transferring physical shares and how the system makes it tough for them.
Another investor and broker Raj Kishore Harkut raised the issue of how his compliant to the SEBI is yet to be resolved even though it has been more than two years. The SEBI Chief assured to address them as per existing norms.