The Securities and Exchange Board of india (Sebi) has rejigged the portfolios of its top officials following the entry of new whole time member S Raman. Raman has been entrusted key departments of Investment Management, Enforcement and Enquiries and Adjudication departments.
Investment management department manages the crucial foreign institutional investors, mutual funds and collective investment schemes (CIS). FIIs and MF are areas, where there has been constant tweaking of rules and regulations in the past.
Mutual funds are implementing the new direct plan proposed by Sebi in all their schemes. There have been requests from market players that Sebi should look at the practice of charging exit loads for switching of investments from existing plans into the new direct plans.
The CIS area also has been in media focus following increasing instances of illegal money raising schemes. Sebi chairman U K Sinha has called for a separate regulator for these schemes.
Raman, who thus is likely to hit the ground running, is familiar with both Indian and overseas capital markets. A career banker, Raman was the chairman and managing director of Canara Bank before joining Sebi in December. He started at Bank of India in 1974. He handled varied portfolios such as Corporate Credit, International Banking, Human Resources etc during his career with postings in different locations such as Nagpur, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, New Delhi, Bhubaneshwar etc. He also had two stints overseas at Jersey (UK) from 1983 to 1987 and as Chief Executive of their US Operations from June 2005 to October 2008.
Raman served Union Bank of India as Executive Director from October 2008 to August 2010 where he oversaw treasury,corporate credit and transaction banking, etc.
Rajeev Kumar Agarwal will handle market regulation, surveillance and legal affairs. Prashant Saran, who recently got a second term at Sebi, will handle corporation finance department, investigations and investor education.