Norms on physical delivery settlement by July-end: Sebi

“The issue of enabling physical delivery-based settlement is (being) discussed between Sebi and stock exchanges and we expect to reach a conclusion by end of this month,” Chairman C B Bhave, told reporters on the sidelines of a function here. “We should see something before end of July.”

In March, Sebi had decided to allow physical delivery in the equity derivatives segment to bring down speculation in the equity markets and had said it will hold talks with the stock exchanges and work on the system.  Bhave also said Sebi is considering whether distributors of financial products need to be regulated. “We are looking at the issue and once we decide on it, we will bring out a consultative paper.” To a query on the slow progress of Mutual Fund (MF) trading platform launched on stock exchanges, Bhave said, the process was new and took time to build up. Sebi is also looking at launching options in the currency derivative segment fairly soon.

“The technical group beteen RBI and Sebi is working on this and we expect a decision soon,” Bhave said. Sebi is also considering issue of listing of exchanges. “We have referred to a committee under chairmanship of former RBI Governor, Bimal Jalan. There were issues relating to  ‘infrastructure institutions in the market’ that is stock exchanges, depositories and clearing corporations. The question was that can these institutions being infrastructural in nature be driven purely for profit and what kind of conflicts can arise out of that,” Bhave said.