The SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India) is seriously looking into the problem of prescient texts on results of the company circulated by market sources in private groups of WhatsApp. This data was given by SEBI chairman this week to the media that showed the inquiry is receiving momentum.
The comments by Ajay Tyagi, SEBI chairman, arrive weeks after media investigation posted minimum 12 such incidents of prescient texts about main companies of India. “The texts are quite similar to what has arrived in results, so it is something we can’t really sit silently on,” claimed Tyagi to the media in an interview.
Mentioning unnamed insiders, the Business Standard newspaper claimed SEBI had called company secretaries and chief financial officers of minimum 12 companies over the problem of if prescient messages of social media including them were being distributed. The watchdog had asked every official of the company to be present and give a written compliance about those given authorization to the quarterly results and the approach employed to distribute price-sensitive data within the firm, the paper claimed.
The officials were ordered to clarify the actions taken to avoid future incidences without naming the firms whose executives were called, the document claimed said. Tyagi refused to verify if the watchdog had called company officials, but showed concern regarding whether such texts were being distributed. “I will not claim whether we called officials or not, but we are considering this extremely seriously,” he claimed to the media on the account of an event related to investment banking.
Exchanges are also working together with SEBI and seeing into the issue, claimed chief executive of the National Stock Exchange, Vikram Limaye, to the media in an interview. National Stock Exchange is the largest bourse operator of India. “We are operating with SEBI, as you might hope,” Limaye claimed.