Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic where many have lost their jobs or offered pay cuts and despite all other economic turmoil, SEBI is concerned over the upsurge of retail activities in the stock market.
SEBI Chairman Ajay Tyagi is not firm with allowing various companies to combine their first and second-quarter results. If the earnings from both the quarters are combined then the companies will have a very long time, till mid-November and in the absence of results for a fairly long period, there is a possibility that financial analysts, media houses, and investors may attempt for guesses of companies’ performance leading to abstract information. Also, insider trading may take place due to uneven information between the company’s management and common investors.
With regard to the investments of Chinese bodies in the Indian stock market, Tyagi replied that decisions regarding the ownership of foreign portfolio investments(FPIs) are supervised by the Government of India. The government has altered FEMA(Foreign Exchange Management Act) in terms of the FDI with the countries in which India shares land boundaries. For FPIs, SEBI has offered various recommendations but the final implementation is under the purview of Government.
The investigation report of the wrecked Franklin Templeton Mutual Fund will come out by the end of July, he further added. Regulation of capital markets is a challenging task and complete credit goes to the people at SEBI for the upkeep of the functioning of the market during the lockdown.