Sebi Officials & Asset Disclosure: Privacy Concerns

Mumbai, Dec 12 (PTI) Sebi Chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey on Friday said senior officials working for the capital markets regulator have expressed discomfort with making their asset details public from a privacy perspective.

He said the report of the committee on managing conflicts of interest, which makes recommendations to disclose financial assets and liabilities of officials above the chief general manager rank, will be discussed at the next board meeting.

"There are concerns around it on the grounds of privacy. They have no concerns about giving it internally to an independent office or whatever we establish inside Sebi for this. But, putting it out as a matter of thing to the public domain, they have issues," Pandey said while speaking at an event organised by the Mint newspaper here.

Implementation of the report will be discussed by the Sebi board at the next meeting, he said, adding that the brass is comfortable with a majority of the recommendations.

It can be noted that the constitution of the committee to come out with a detailed framework on dealing with conflicts of interest and disclosures around that was among the first major decisions taken by Pandey since taking over.

Pandey had succeeded Madhabi Puri Buch, against whom allegations of potential lapses on conflict of interest and lack of disclosures were made.

Meanwhile, Pandey also said that Sebi is also mulling coming out with a common regulation for fund managers, which is across industries, including alternative investment funds, mutual funds, portfolio management schemes and others.

Explaining the rationale for such a regulation, he explained, "There can be something which may jar you sometimes. Here you are requiring this qualification, here you are requiring something else. Someone who wants all three licenses has to independently satisfy that".

Such a regulation can help reduce the cost of compliance and also the time taken, he said, adding that the idea is to disassociate industry regulations from the rules governing fund managers.

The upcoming amendments on the listing obligations and disclosure requirements (LODR) are a comprehensive exercise, which will take a long time to come, he said.

He also rued that the innovator's growth platform (IGP) has not taken off as desired, and added that the platform can be used for fundraising by strategically important industries of the future, like space technology players and defence manufacturing entities.