Sebi meet on short selling issue soon

Market regulator Sebi is likely to consider modalities for the short selling of shares by institutional investors at its board meeting in Mumbai on March 22.

The Sebi board is meeting in pursuance of the announcement made by Finance Minister P Chidambaram in the Budget 2007-08, official sources told PTI adding short selling is the key agenda of the discussion.

The Finance Minister in his Budget on February 28 said Sebi would come out with guidelines for short selling of securities by institutional investors, that is selling securities without owning them at the time of trade.

The secondary Market Advisory Committee, appointed by Sebi, had recommended short-selling by institutional investors way back in October 2005.

The issue has been hanging in balance due to differences between market regulator Sebi and banking regulator Reserve Bank (RBI).

Sources said, while RBI favoured a gradual process starting with the domestic institutional investors, Sebi preferred to adopt a big bang approach by allowing all institutional investors to short sell from day one.

According to the present guidelines, institutional investors""FIIs, mutual funds, banks, insurance companies"" are mandatorily required to settle on the basis of deliveries of securities owned and held by them.

As, they are to settle by deliveries, no margin is levied on their transactions. The issue of allowing institutional investors to short sell is linked to the programme for stock lending and borrowing.

The stock lending and borrowing programme was in vogue for institutional investors until 1997 under FEMA, which was replaced with FEMA in 1999-00. Now the issue is whether proposed lending and borrowing programme can be allowed for foreign institutional investors (FII) under FEMA.

A revised scheme for lending and borrowing stocks was prepared after the stock markets experienced huge volatility in May 2006.

The Budget had also proposed lending and borrowing programme to facilitate short selling.

In a recent interview to a news channel, Sebi Chairman Damodaran has said, "...Now that there is clear, unambiguous settlement in the Budget speech and the structures are in place, we know what to do with stock lending and borrowing mechanism, which is the enabling mechanism to ensure that the short selling accompanied by delivery is taking place and therefore, you will see action on this sooner rather than later."

Sources said naked short selling, as allowed in the US, would not be permitted as per the recommendations by the Secondary Market Advisory Committee.

Accordingly, all investors will be required to mandatorily honour the obligation of delivering the securities at the time of settlement.

The sources said while short selling may not necessarily curb volatility, it would reflect future market realities, on the basis of which the authorities may take corrective measures.

It is a market way of sending correct signals and not the Government-designed anti-volatility mechanism, they said.