Sebi makes IPO form simpler, more informative

Market regulator Sebi today made it simpler for investors to apply for shares in initial public offer by cutting down the paper work and removing unnecessary details.

At the same time, Sebi also decided in favour of investors getting more useful information, such as track record of bankers managing the issue and important details related to the pricing of the offer.

"The IPO form is not investor friendly. It takes a lot of time to understand it. Taking all this into account, the whole form has been changed and this will lead to reduction in the size of the form," Sebi Chairman UK Sinha told reporters here.

To make it more investor friendly, Sebi has revised the structure, design, format, contents and order of information of the IPO form and prospectus.

"This has been done based on recommendations of group constituted by Sebi, comprising cross section of market participants. The revised Abridged Prospectus shall contain company/ project specific information and highlight materially relevant disclosures such as peer comparison of important financial ratios and risk factors," it said.

Information which are generic in nature would be given in a separate document and not in the main form.

The size of the form in the prospectus would be reduced to a normal A4 paper size while number of pages would be reduced to half.

The information would be given in a readable and investor friendly manner while highlighting information related to the pricing, Sebi said while adding that investors should also be told about track record of issue managers.

Besides, these forms run into 15-20 pages in most cases, although there are only 2-3 pages where particulars need to be filled in by the investors and the rest of the pages contain instructions, information about the company and the issue and details about bankers, registrars and bidding centres.

With an aim to save investors from a cumbersome process in opening their trading accounts, Sebi has decided to simplify and rationalise the process with the minimum required paperwork.

"Board has approved the simplification and rationalisation of trading account opening process with stock brokers," Sebi said after a board meeting here today.

"Sebi has been getting feedback from the investors that the present procedure is very cumbersome and requires a very large number of signatures on different documents.