Addressing the issues raised by T Shivaraman, President of Madras Chamber of Commerce and Industry, in his welcome address, that companies are now finding it hard to deal with multiple agencies, multiple regulations and multiple bosses, and ensuring compliance to all these prevents the bosses of small organisations from focusing on business growth, UK Sinha, Chairman, SEBI, said still many companies are flouting some guidelines.

If SEBI steps in, some even term SEBI a dragon. Giving an example, he said two clauses — 35 (pertaining to e-voting facilities) and 49 (risk management and disclosure norms) — are often not complied with.

“You will be horrified to know that 1,100 companies in this country are delinquent so far as the Clause 35 is concerned, and 900 are not complied with Clause 49 requirements. Now we have come out with standard operating procedure as to how to deal with these companies. Would you still call SEBI a dragon? You better comply now rather than running into problems later and investors walking away,” he said.

See these issues in the light of what is happening around the world. If one looks at Brazil, Egypt, Turkey and in many other countries in the world, including India, in the last five years socio political regimes have changed, and are still changing in a completely unexpected manner. World over, regulators are now coming to the finding that imposing a penalty on a company for flouting norms, is not good enough, because it is like adding to the cost of running business to a particular company. So, more and more executives and key management people are penalised in their personal capacities.

“If that is happening in our social and political life all over the world, how can the corporate world be away from that,” he quizzed.

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