Sebi to hire independent agency for sale of attached assets

To help it recover the pending dues from defaulters, Sebi has decided to rope in an independent agency for conducting valuation and sale of assets attached by the regulator as part of its recovery proceedings.
Inviting bids from the interested parties, Sebi said it has been initiating proceedings against various defaulters for their failure to refund money to investors or failure to pay the penalty, fees and disgorgement money from time to time.
Sebi has been granted powers by the government to attach the assets of defaulters and it can prohibit such defaulters from disposing, transferring, alienating or creating any encumbrance on such assets.

The attached assets are required to be sold for recovering the dues and therefore Sebi has decided to appoint an agency to assist it for assessing the value of assets and selling them to the prospective buyers, the regulator said.
The regulator has invited "bids from eligible agencies to provide services such as valuation, sale of immovable assets on behalf of Sebi and incidental services."
The interested applicants will be required to provide an e-auction platform or engage e-auction service providers.

The agency will give all logistic support to Sebi in liquidating the assets and provide inputs to arrive the correct value of the property for deciding the Reserve Price. It will also assist Sebi in handing over possession to the buyer after completion of sale.

The agency will be appointed initially for a period of three years. However, Sebi reserves rights to terminate the appointment or engage more agencies.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) said that bids can be submitted by June 10.
Spelling out the eligibility criteria, Sebi said interested applicants should have a net worth of at least Rs 2 crore and should have annual turnover of at least Rs 10 crore for each of the last three financial years.
The agency should have office in Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Delhi, Ahmedabad and also preferably have offices in all state capitals.

Sebi has separately hired HDFC Realty and SBI Cap for sale of Sahara assets as per directions of the Supreme Court in the long-running case.