SEBI Board Meeting Likely On June 18; Focus On Ease of Doing Business — Profit Exclusive

The Securities and Exchange Board of India is likely to hold its next board meeting on June 18, with a key focus on improving ease of doing business for market participants, according to four people familiar with the matter.

The markets regulator also recently held consultations with various industry bodies, including FICCI and associations representing research analysts in the run-up to the meeting, to gather feedback on simplifying regulations and reducing compliance burdens, the people in the know told NDTV Profit.

The meeting may also discuss the issue of independence of clearing corporations that has been in discussion since November last year.

Last year, Ananth Narayan, whole time member at SEBI, spoke for the first time on the issue of clearing corps' independence from their parent exchanges. This could come up for discussion in the board meeting. However, it is possible that instead of a complete demerger, only the ownership percentage of the exchanges on the clearing entities would be capped, the people cited above said.

Globally, many markets treat CCs as public utilities, often independently owned and operated to serve the collective interests of all stakeholders. In India, however, CCs are currently wholly owned by their respective parent exchanges.

As reported previously, the regulator could also finally discuss the settlement scheme for brokers who received a notice for being associated with algo trading platforms. This was supposed to be discussed in the previous meeting as well.

As per one of the people, there could be some developments based on the work of the newly formed committee on code of conflict of interest of SEBI officials. The formation of such a committee was announced by the regulator in the last board meeting conducted on March 24.

Apart from these, the proposal papers released by the regulator in the last few months, that have reached finality are likely to be discussed.

An email sent to the regulator for comments on the matter did not elicit a response at the time of publishing this report.