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Sebi may tighten P-Note guidelines, says Sinha

Market Regulator Plans To Cut Post-IPO Listing To 4 Days
Sebi chairman U K Sinha said on Friday the market watchdog may further tighten rules governing Participatory Notes (P-Notes), which are a financial derivative product used by foreign investors to bypass the regulatory system when entering the Indian market. He also said the regulator is working to cut down the time taken for companies to list their shares on the exchanges post public offerings to four days from six days now.
P-Notes had been identified by a special investigation team (SIT) -looking into the menace of black money under orders from the Supreme Court -as one of the probable routes that facilitate generation and use of unaccounted funds. “SIT is constantly monitoring the P-Note data and is not very comfortable with the current process of issue and administration of the same. Further tightening of norms governing P-notes could happen to address the concerns of SIT,“ Sinha said.
He was delivering the inaugural speech at the interna ional conference on certifica ion and capacity building in inancial markets at the NISM campus at Patalganga near he city. He launched a certification course being offered jo ntly by NISM and Moody's Analytics, a global research and analytics firm.

On the period between a public offering's close to lis ing, Sinha said, “A Sebi team s already working to bring he timeline down to T+4 days.“ When Sinha took over as Sebi chairman in 2011, companies used to take about 21 days to list their shares after a public offering. Since then, using technological innovations in the banking and financial services space, Sebi has cut this timeline drastically to six days.

On P-Notes, Sinha pointed out that its regulation has seen a complete overhaul since 2011, and under the current structure it is on a par with norms for registered foreign investors. Recently , Sebi even put in place rules that now require P-Note holders to report intra-month change of ownership, if any . Earlier, P Note holders and issuers were required to report holdings on an end-of-the-month basis.

Talking about the regulator's approach to P-Notes, another top Sebi official said, “P-Notes should be killed.“

There have been instances where Indian companies and individuals used the P-Note route to invest in the Indian market to save on taxes and also to use their ill-gotten money to make an extra profit or manipulate stock prices.

Speaking about having a large pool of trained personnel in the securities market, Sinha stressed on the need for high quality certification.“NISM is going to focus on the area of research. Stock exchanges and the entire Sebi system have a lot of data, which is relevant and unique to our country . Based on those data, a very high quality of advanced research is required,“ Sinha said. “And one of the mandates of NISM is to develop the research capability,“ he said.
Times of India New Delhi,21st January 2017

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