By Raju Vernekar
Mumbai, Feb 5:
Amid market volatility following the Adani matter, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on Saturday said the Indian financial market, represented by Sensex and Nifty, has demonstrated stability and has continued to function in a transparent, fair and efficient manner.
Although the SEBI did not refer to the Adani matter, the market regulator in a statement said that on a long term basis, the Indian markets have been viewed positively by investors. On a cross country comparison of dollar adjusted market returns with both peer and developed countries, during the past 3 years till date, places the Indian market as a positive outlier.
“During the past week, unusual price movement in the stocks of a business conglomerate has been observed. 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,” SEBI said.
Further, in all specific entity-related matters, if any information comes to SEBI’s 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 future as well. SEBI is committed to market integrity and to ensure appropriate structural strength to function in an uninterrupted, transparent and efficient manner as has been the case so far, SEBI said.
Officials confirmed that the statement has been issued in the wake of the Adani matter. The Bombay Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchanges 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.
The Adani Group has lost over $100 billion in market value since Hindenburg Research accused it of stock manipulation and accounting fraud, in the January 24 report. The group has denied any wrongdoing and has threatened to sue Hindenburg.
