Committed to ensuring market integrity, says Sebi amid Adani crisis
The Adani group has dismissed the charges as lies, saying it complies with all laws and disclosure requirements
New Delhi, Feb 4: Amid a raging controversy over a meltdown in Adani group stocks, regulator Sebi on Saturday said it is committed to ensuring the stock market's integrity and all necessary surveillance measures are in place to address any excessive volatility in individual shares.
Without naming Adani group specifically, the capital markets watchdog said in a statement that unusual price movement in the stocks of a business conglomerate has been observed in the past week. Officials confirmed that the statement has been issued in the wake of the Adani matter only, as reported by news agency PTI.
Adani group stocks have taken a beating on the bourses after US-based activist short-seller Hindenburg Research made a litany of allegations, including fraudulent transactions and share price manipulation at the Gautam Adani-led group.
The Adani group has dismissed the charges as lies, saying it complies with all laws and disclosure requirements.
The 10 listed Adani group firms have faced a combined erosion of over Rs 8.5 lakh crore in just six trading sessions. Adani Enterprises also had to withdraw a Rs 20,000 crore share sale.
Several Opposition leaders and some experts have been also raising questions about Sebi not acting in the Adani matter, while Parliament proceedings have also got disrupted on this issue for two days.
Some political leaders are also believed to have written to Sebi and the government, demanding an investigation, while Opposition parties are also seeking a joint parliamentary committee probe.
"As part of its mandate, Sebi seeks to maintain orderly and efficient functioning of the market and has put in place a set of well-defined, publicly available surveillance measures (including the ASM framework) to address excessive volatility in specific stocks.
"This mechanism gets automatically triggered under certain conditions of price volatility in any stock," the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) said.
Netizens rubbish TMC MP Mahua Moitra's tweet about SBI's overall exposure to Adani Group
Stock exchanges BSE and NSE have put three Adani group companies -- Adani Enterprises, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone and Ambuja Cements -- under their short-term additional surveillance measure (ASM), which basically means that intra-day trading would require a 100 per cent upfront margin and is aimed at curbing speculation and short-selling in these stocks.
Sebi
further
said
that
in
all
specific
entity-related
matters,
if
any
information
comes
to
its
notice,
then,
as
per
extant
policies,
the
same
is
examined
and
after
due
examination,
appropriate
action
is
taken.
"Sebi
has
consistently
followed
this
approach
on
entity-level
issues
and
would
continue
to
do
so
in
the
future
as
well,"
it
added.
The
regulator,
however,
stopped
short
of
clearly
mentioning
whether
it
is
conducting
any
probe
in
the
matter
or
not.
Sebi further said the Indian financial market, as represented by Sensex and Nifty, has demonstrated ongoing stability and is continuing to function in a transparent, fair and efficient manner.
"On a longer-term basis also, Indian markets have been viewed positively by investors. A cross-country comparison of dollar-adjusted market returns with both peer and developed countries, during the past three years till date, places the Indian market as a positive outlier," it noted.
The regulator said it is committed to ensuring market integrity and that the markets continue to have the appropriate structural strength to function in an uninterrupted, transparent and efficient manner as has been the case so far.