Market regulator Securities & Exchange Board of India (Sebi), on Monday, said like retail investors, FIIs should also pay the full amount of IPOs upfront, if its idea of reducing the time gap between the last day of subscription and the listing of the scrip is implemented.

“FIIs have to put up margins, retail investors have to pay 100 per cent. This is related to a time gap between the last day of subscription and the day the securities get listed. If the time is crunched, then there is no reason why everyone cannot pay all upfront,” Sebi Chairman C B Bhave said at a Euromoney Conference.

The market regulator said the present process that requires three or four weeks is not acceptable in today’s state of modern infrastructure in the country.

Roadmap soon

“We want to reduce this. In a few months, we will tell the markets what our roadmap is and how we plan to crunch this time lag between the last date of subscription and listing date. We should be able to achieve this in lesser period of time,” he said.

On the issue of Participatory Notes, he said 190 FIIs and 470 sub-accounts have registered with Sebi since October end last year when liberal registration policy was announced. “This is a good progress. We take 15 days to three weeks to register FIIs unless the applications are incomplete (and) where some correspondence is needed,” he said. Mr Bhave said Sebi did not recognise hedge funds and private equity funds as separate categories.

Mr Bhave said there has been an outflow of $2 billion in the first two months of this year, against a net inflow of $17 billion in the last full year. “We in India understand that flow of investments will not always be a one-way traffic. Our systems and our markets can be said to be truly mature when we can handle both flows into the country,” he said.