Sebi to allow short selling by first week of July

To resume after six-year hiatus.

After a gap of more than six years, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is set to roll out a more sophisticated version of short-selling in equity markets for both domestic and foreign institutional investors (FIIs) in the first week of July.

Under the proposed scheme, short selling in individual scrips will be capped at 10 per cent of the free float of shares of any company. The free float of a listed security is the proportion of shares available for purchase in the market by investors.

In principle, it is the part of shares not held by strategic shareholders or promoters.

To start with, short selling will be allowed in only those scrips for which derivative products are available.

The market regulator will only allow covered short sale when a settlement is backed by physical delivery of shares and there is a heavy penalty for market participants indulging in naked short sales, or transactions in which a broker fails to deliver shares at the time of settlement of trade.

Exchanges will be given the discretion to decide on the margin requirement of brokers involved in short selling. Several broker-wise and client-wise caps are likely to be imposed.

A single clearing member of an exchange may have an open position in short selling capped at 10 per cent of the total market-wide position in a certain scrip or Rs 50 crore, whichever is less.

This cap will also be valid for a single foreign institutional investor (FII) or a single mutual fund.

Similarly, an individual member cannot have an open position in short selling beyond 1 per cent of the total market-wide position of a certain scrip.

The maturity of the short-selling contracts will be valid for seven days.

Short-selling was banned by Sebi on March 7, 2001, following a crash in stock prices and allegations that Anand Rathi, the then president of the BSE, used confidential information acquired by BSE's surveillance department to make gains and contribute to volatility.