SAT adjourns RIL hearing till next month

The Securities Appellate Tribunal has adjourned an appeal against a stock market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi)’s order on disclosure violations till next month. The matter will now be heard on March 19.

Sebi had passed an order for violation of the listing agreement. The matter dates back to the 2007-09 period during which Reliance Industries (RIL) had issued 120 million warrants to its promoters. The regulator said this increased paid-up capital, but the company did not disclose diluted earnings per share (EPS) despite the existence of share warrants.

EPS is ”one of the important tools that investors use while making a decision regarding their investment in particular scrip”, the Sebi order had said. It imposed a penalty of Rs 13 crore in its order passed in August 2014.

A company spokesperson had said after the order that it was not a matter of non-disclosure.

“The issue relates to the method of calculation of diluted EPS under the Accounting Standards. The issue is not of non-disclosure. It can be observed from the results published by the company of all the quarters in question that both basic and diluted EPS have been disclosed. The company in its arguments and written submission has brought out all the relevant clauses of the Accounting Standards to substantiate why basic EPS and diluted EPS were the same in all the quarters. We are now studying the order as to the interpretation Sebi has taken and would take appropriate action based on legal advice,” the company had said. The matter had last been heard on December 10, 2014. Senior lawyer Janak Dwarkadas represented RIL, while Mihir Mody represented Sebi.