SEBI to start gradation option for issuers

Kolkata, Dec 16: For the first time in the history of Indian capital markets, the SEBI has introduced a gradation option for the issuer in the capital market.

Announcing this here today Securities and Exchange Board of India Chairman M Damodaran said,''This is perhaps the first time in the world that the gradation option of the proposed issuer had been introduced with a view to not only providing clarity to the proposed issue but also to give a clear picture about the company, which has applied for IPO in different stock exchanges.'' Stating that all the three leading Rating agencies like Crisil, CARE and ICRA had been entrusted with doing this gradation by rating them between one to five, he said so far eleven of the 61 companies, who has applied for the IPO during the current fiscal, have been rated through this process.

Replying to another query, he said that SEBI was seriously considering to make this process mandatory for all the companies, both under private and public sector, to prepare their own gradings mandatory for applying for the IPO.

He,however, refused to disclose either the probability of the timeframe for this process and said that the entire programme would be dependent on the SEBI Board of Directors, who might take up the issue in its next board meeting either in March or April before introducing them for the benefit of the capital market also for the first time in its chequered history.

Earlier, Mr Damodaran inaugurated a day-long workshop on capital markets for financial jounalists, which is being held similar in line with the ones held in Chennai and Delhi. After Kolkata, another workshop would be held in Mumbai to make the financial journalists more aware of the latest SEBI guidelines and regualtions, so that the journalist could avoid misreporting.

Among others, SEBI Executive Director R K Nayar and Wholetime member T C Nayar and OSD SEBI R Ravichandran attended the workshop and discussed various aspects of financial journalism.

UNI