SEBI has tweaked norms to favour listed companies during their open offer, which is nothing but making an offer to investors to buy shares from the market. Acquisition through stock exchange settlement process, through bulk and/or block deals shall be permitted during the open offer, SEBI said. Block and bulk deal is nothing but a negotiated deal window where a huge quantity of shares can be bought on the exchange platform at one price.

“For indirect acquisitions where the public announcement of an open offer has been made, 100 percent of the consideration payable under the open offer must be deposited in an escrow account,” SEBI said.

In case of delays in making open offers due to acts of omission or commission of the acquirer, a 10 percent interest to be paid to all shareholders who have tendered the shares in the open offer, SEBI said.

The regulator also approved amendments to SEBI (Prohibition of Insider Trading) Regulations, 2015. These include maintaining a structured digital database containing the nature of unpublished price sensitive information and the names of persons who have shared the information. This will involve the automation of the process of filing disclosures to stock exchanges, restriction on the trading window not to be made applicable for transactions as prescribed by SEBI and includes entities to file the non-compliance of ‘code of conduct’ with the stock exchanges.

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