Dipen Chatterjee is a Partner in the Corporate and Commercial practice group in the Kolkata office. He specialises in corporate, insolvency, financing and capital market transactions. Dipen has also advised clients in securities law related litigation.
The Board of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”), at their meeting held on 27 June 2019, has approved several changes to the regulations applicable to listed entities. The amendments to the SEBI (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2015 (“Listing Regulations”), the SEBI (Substantial Acquisition of Shares and Takeovers) Regulations, 2011 (“Takeover Regulations”), and the SEBI (Prohibition of Insider Trading) Regulations, 2015 (“Insider Trading Regulations”),are discussed below.
In a welcome move towards enabling issuance and listing of shares with differential voting rights in India, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) at the meeting of its board on 27 June 2019 approved a framework for enabling listing in India of companies with dual classes of shares, i.e. superior voting rights shares (SR – Shares) and ordinary shares (SR – Shares Framework).
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) vide its circular dated 1 November 2018 (SEBI Circular) laid down the roadmap for shortening the timeline for listing in a public issue, from the existing framework of T+6 working days, to 3 working days from the date of issue closure. The framework was to be implemented in a phased manner. One of the key changes to achieve T+3 listing, was the introduction of the UPI payment mechanism and phasing out of the Syndicate ASBA mechanism. Our ERGO on the SEBI Circular can be accessed here.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has observed that many statutory auditors of listed companies have abruptly resigned without completing their assignment for the year. Many a times, these resignations were sudden and the reasons were often vague, ranging from “pre-occupation” to “lack of adequate information from the company”. For example, in June 2019, Price Waterhouse & Co. resigned as the auditor of Reliance Capital and Reliance Home Finance, stating that they did not receive substantive responses to their queries.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) by its circular of 19 July 2019 (Circular) has standardised the reporting of violations of the code of conduct (Code) formulated by listed companies, intermediaries and fiduciaries under the SEBI (Prohibition of Insider Trading) Regulations, 2015 (Regulations).
