Sebi announces steps to attract retail investors to market


Mumbai: In order to attract more retail investors to the market, regulator Sebi Thursday announced a host of steps, including simplier IPO forms and greater disclosures by companies, besides modifying takeover norms. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), in its board meeting, has also decided to impose a transaction fee of Rs 100-150 on investments of Rs 10,000 in Mutual Fund to incentivise them to sell MF schemes to investors. The regulator also announced the guidelines for Infrastructure Debt Fund (IDF) and simplified the Know Your Customer (KYC) registration process for investors in different segments of the financial market. The investor form for the Initial Public Offer (IPO) henceforth be short and simple, Sebi chairman U K Sinha said, adding, the number of pages in the form will now come down by 50 percent. "The IPO form is not investor friendly. It takes a lot of time to understand it. Taking all this into account, the whole form has been changed and this will lead to reduction in the size of the form," he told reporters after the meeting. The form would carry information regarding the peer companies, Price-Earnings (PE) ratio and track record of lead managers of the IPO. Currently the IPO forms run into 15-20 pages, although there are only 2-3 pages where particulars are needed to be filled in by the investors and the rest contain instructions, information about the company and the issue and details about bankers, registrars and bidding centres. The Sebi board also decided on a uniform KYC norms for different market players and accept "Aadhar" or Unique Indentity card as one of the document as identity proof for bidding in IPO and FPO.
Source: PTI