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The Securities and Exchange Board of India is likely to introduce a new system of reporting for price-sensitive information by listed companies.
The companies will have to inform only SEBI, which will then disseminate this information electronically to stock exchanges. However, no timeframe has been set for introduction of the new system.
Currently, listed companies have to inform each stock exchange separately. Corporates have been seeking relief from multiple reporting obligations.
“We have already called for a tender to set up a unified platform. First round of screening is over. We are in the process of request for proposal (RFP). Once this comes through, listed companies would not be required to file information in both the stock exchanges. Today it is two, tomorrow it could be two, three or many more,” said Ms Usha Narayanan, Executive Director at SEBI, at an Assocham event here.
The public would get to know the price-sensitive information only after the stock exchanges uploads them. “As they are price-sensitive information, even though it may first come to the SEBI platform, it will not be disseminated to public from our end. This is because validation and checks have to be done by the stock exchanges before they are made available for public consumption,” Ms Narayanan said.
For investors, too, the proposed system could be beneficial as the SEBI-controlled platform would be single-point source of information. Currently, investors have to look into multiple stock exchange Web sites for getting information about lesser known or smaller companies.
This is not the first time that SEBI was looking at an electronic platform for filing of corporate governance reports and price-sensitive information. In 2002, SEBI had in association with National Informatics Centre (NIC) come up with an electronic filing system by the name Electronic Data Information Filing and Retrieval (EDIFAR) system.
“There was some shortfall in that (EDIFAR) system. Whatever was the shortfall, we have taken note of it and will over come them now,” Ms Narayanan told Business Line when asked about the EDIFAR system.
On who would monitor filing of price-sensitive information by companies, the SEBI official said that this would be done only by the stock exchanges and not SEBI. “The listing agreement is between stock exchanges and the company.”
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