MCX's board to see five new entrants

The Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX), the country's largest commodity futures trading bourse, will see five new entrants in its 14-member board after a slew of resignations and retirements.

Venkat Chary, chairman, and C M Maniar, independent director (ID), have resigned due to the recent criterion fixed by the Forward Markets Commission (FMC) of a maximum age for board member at 70. The FMC last week asked commodity exchanges to adhere to these guidelines for appointment of directors and IDs and send a compliance report by September 2.

MCX said in a BSE filing that Lambertus Rutten, erstwhile managing director up to June 30, 2012, and non-executive director thereafter had resigned as he now stayed abroad and had been seeking leave of absence. Because of his preoccupations, he had resigned, the circular said.

P R Barpande, director, has also resigned due to other preoccupations. In addition, Prakash Apte, an FMC- nominated ID, has resigned. He will be replaced by Santosh Kumar Mohanty, director in FMC, as an ID. Shvetal Vakil, a shareholder director since October 2003 and approved by FMC as an ID, ceases to retain the position due to the term criterion prescribed in the revised guidelines.

The exchange further said it had earmarked Rs 232.4 crore as an initial Settlement Guarantee Fund, approved by the board in a meeting on Friday. Of that, Rs 140 crore will be set aside from total exchange reserves of Rs 1200 crore. The remaining Rs 92.4 crore will be obtained from brokers' money as deposited with the exchange in the form of cash, collateral, margin money and interest. The money has been extracted from these two heads in line with the formula devised by FMC in a circular dated August 23. As on March 2012, the bourse had a meagre Rs 1.9 crore in the SGF.