The Finance Ministry will soon convene a meeting of stakeholders in the stock exchange industry and other market infrastructure institutions to get their views on the Bimal Jalan committee report, a top official said.
The Centre is yet to firm up its views on the Bimal Jalan committee recommendations, which has created strong divergent views among stakeholders. This committee had gone into the ownership and governance issues of market infrastructure institutions, including stock exchanges.
“It will happen sooner rather than later. Most likely this month itself”, official sources said, when asked to specify a timeframe. The proposed meeting is likely to be chaired by Mr R. Gopalan, Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs. Mr Gopalan had recently advocated the taking of a “middle path” to the strong divergent views.
Bourses oppose
It is more than six months since the Bimal Jalan committee report was submitted to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). The committee had recommended that bourses should not be allowed to list for now, but the stock exchanges are all opposed to any such stance.
While favouring listing, the stock exchanges, however, have different views on the matter of segregating their regulatory and commercial role. While stock exchanges like the National Stock Exchange prefer listing option to be provided along with the stipulation of segregation, there are others who feel that listing and segregation need not be linked.
Consultations
Segregation could be done in a phased manner, some stakeholders have suggested to the Corporate Affairs Ministry. Most of the stakeholders have now given their inputs on the Bimal Jalan committee report to the Corporate Affairs Ministry, which had recently launched consultations in the context of administration of Companies Act.
Also, there is no unanimity of views among exchanges on whether they should only be allowed to go in for self-listing or even cross-listing could be pursued. For MCX-SX, both self-listing and cross listing are acceptable to it, according to Mr Joseph Massey, Managing Director & CEO.
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