Gold purchases by India, the world's largest importer of the metal, are down to a trickle because of high prices, prompting local traders and jewellers to reprocess scrap and jewellery to cater to rapidly falling local demand.
The five-month-old exchange traded currency futures market is set to witness competition, rising volumes and innovations with the United Stock Exchange of India gearing up to launch the product in April.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India is expected to take up two critical issues at a board meeting scheduled February 2
In a move to protect the interest of investors, the Securities and Exchange Board of India has asked a high-level committee to suggest guidelines for the power of attorney that investors issue in favour of their brokers. The agreements that are signed between brokers and investors are also up for review.
The committee said that promoters will have to make mandatory disclosures when they raise finances by pledging their shares. This is because lenders ask promoters to pay additional margins when the value of the shares pledged as collateral falls.
Sebi has launched a coordinated investigation with the Registrar of Companies to examine transactions between Satyam and its bankers BNP Paribas, Citibank, HSBC, HDFC and ICICI Bank
Satyam fiasco may prompt market regulator to be stricter with promoters.
ADAG, Mahindra BT, L&T Infotech may team up with PEs.
President & CEO of IDFC Private Equity Group, Luis Miranda, spoke on various issues relating to private equity in an exclusive interview with Rajesh Bhayani.
Mutual fund investors may soon have to give separate cheques to distributors as commission.
May bar premature withdrawals from fixed maturity plans.
These choices are going to be made available to Indian fund houses by S&P's index services division through India Index Services. ETF is a passive fund wherein investments are made in index companies as per their individual weightage. In times of uncertainty, betting on indices rather than individual companies helps. Index-based products thus become popular.
Sebi likely to come out with a policy paper soon.
The Securities & Exchange Board of India has decided to conduct a survey to find out why investors are staying away from the securities market. This is the first time that the market regulator is planning such a survey of investors.
In a key change in its stance, the Securities and Exchange Board of India said it is keeping its options open on banning short sales, which a section of brokers believes are responsible for the collapsing stock market. The benchmark Bombay Stock Exchange Sensex fell below 10,000 Friday, the first time since July 2006.
The last two days' recovery in commodity prices has done little to ease all-round fears of a global recession following the sharp dip in prices over the past three months. Nor are things likely to improve soon.
A representative of a large FII having a huge share in the issue of P-notes said that these relaxations are "no big deal". The 40 per cent limit on investments through P-notes was not a hurdle as selling by FIIs in the last three quarters have been so huge that most of them have enough leg room for issuing fresh P-notes.
Forward contracts are settled by CCIL, but there is no guarantee that the parties may comply with CCIL's terms. "We have proposed to RBI to allow us to provide a guarantee for forward deals," said CCIL Chairman R H Patil. With the CCIL guarantee, banks providing products to currency hedgers, will benefit as they will have to make a lesser provision towards capital adequacy.
Commodity futures exchanges are set for another round of equity restructuring with the Forward Markets Commission, the regulator, currently finalising guidelines that will require anchor investors to prune their equity holding to 26 per cent from the present 40 per cent after three years but before five years.
Sebi wants to reduce the time gap between the closure of an issue and its listing. This process is aimed at removing refund-related concerns and the grey market in IPOs.