Sebi board mulls easier start-up listing rules

​New Delhi: Markets regulator Sebi will discuss a slew of measures at its board meeting on Wednesday for expanding its offer for sale framework to more companies, relax its norms for clubbing of investment limits by established foreign investors and tighten insider trading rules, officials said.

A number of other important matters will also be discussed such as relaxations for new-age ventures in sectors like e-commerce, data analytics and bio-technology to raise funds and get the shares of these new-age ventures traded on stock exchanges and creating a separate category of 'difficult to recover' cases for optimal utilisation of its resources, they added.

These proposals, along with several others, are likely to be discussed by Sebi's board at its meeting Wednesday. Officials said, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is also considering changes in its regulatory framework for debenture trustees.

Besides, it plans to allow custodial services in the commodity derivatives market to enable institutional participation. Another proposal involves enabling mutual funds to undertake 'side pocketing' of debt and money market instruments in case of a credit event while ensuring fair treatment to all unit holders.

'Side pocketing' is a mechanism to separate distressed, illiquid and hard-to-value assets from other more liquid assets in a portfolio. It prevents the distressed assets from damaging the returns generated from more liquid and better-performing assets.

As per one proposal to amend the insider trading norms, entities belonging to promoter group will need to make initial and continuous disclosure about their shareholdings and the subsequent share transactions exceeding Rs 10 lakh.

Currently, such disclosure requirements are mandatory for promoters, key management personnel and directors of a company, but there is no obligation on entities belonging to promoter groups.

Officials said, Sebi is also of the view that an earlier proposed exercise for determining a uniform bond valuation methodology to be followed by all regulated entities across the financial sector may not be pursued.

Such an exercise was suggested by a Working Group on Development of Corporate Bond market in India, chaired by H R Khan. However, Sebi will prescribe high-level principles to be followed uniformly across all mutual funds for strengthening the existing system of valuation of corporate bonds for mutual funds.

Regarding the pricing agencies, Sebi plans to evolve a supervisory and regulatory framework. In another key proposal, Sebi plans to relax is the norms for clubbing of investment limits for FPIs, officials said. Currently, the foreign portfolio investors are treated as part of the same investor group and the investment limits of all such entities are clubbed for deriving the investment limit as applicable to a single FPI, in case of the same set of ultimate beneficial owners investing through multiple entities.

Under the proposed norm, multiple entities having common ownership, directly or indirectly, of more than 50 per cent would be treated as part of the same investor group and their investment limits would be clubbed.

Besides, the clubbing of investment limit would not be applicable in case of entities having common control, if the FPIs are appropriately regulated public retail funds. Public retail funds typically include insurance companies, pension funds and mutual funds or unit trusts that are open for retail subscriptions.

Regarding the changes in the OFS framework, officials said the proposed changes have been formulated as per suggestions from the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) and other stakeholders.