Sebi bars Pinnacle from stock market

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) today cancelled the Certificate of Registration of Pinnacle Shares Registry (PSR), thereby barring them from stock market operations after February 28, 2010.

The regulator inspected PSR’s records after complaints from shareholders of Parsoli Corporation that their share transfer requests had been rejected. Pinnacle was the registrar and share transfer agent of Parsoli.

Inspections revealed there were around 450 instances where the shares of genuine holders of Parsoli were fraudulently transferred to individuals belonging to the promoter group of Parsoli. The transfer of these shares had been effected, on the basis of forged signatures on the transfer deeds.

Pinnacle had rejected share transfers of genuine shareholders by saying there was a ‘signature mismatch’, whereas the shares were already transferred in favour of the promoters of Parsoli or their front entities, Sebi said in its order today.

The client companies of Pinnacle have been asked to avail the services of other registrars and share transfer agents.