Sebi to probe firms who have not conducted AGMs

Sending a strong signal to listed companies to conduct Annual General Meetings (AGM) and send annual reports regularly to its shareholders, market regulator the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) today said it would investigate the details of those companies which have not done so.

"If they are not sending annual reports and not conducting AGMs, these are clear cut violations. Since this question has been raised, I will ask my team to investigate all cases where AGMs have not been called and Annual Reports have not been sent," Sebi Chairman UK Sinha said.

Sebi has allowed companies to send the annual reports via electronic mode if shareholders have consented to it,he said addressing a seminar, on "Securities Market and the Common man" organised by National Stock Exchange here.

To a query about companies being involved in manipulating share prices, Sinha said the market regulator was already investigating such cases. "...If there are any violations, it will be very seriously dealt with and very quickly".

Later talking to reporters, Sinha said Sebi was advising mutual fund industry to launch less number of newer schemes.

"Sebi is encouraging mutual funds to float less number of newer schemes. If there are schemes which are similar investments schemes, Sebi is encouraging them to merge them. We are working towards it...," he said.

Besides, Sebi was working towards reducing the number of days in IPO process which currently takes 12 days for a company. "Sebi has setup a committee to review the entire IPO processes in shortening the time period between the issue closure and listing. It is too premature for me to talk about it, but the current period of 12 days and how to reduce it is part of the [Committee's] mandate," he said.

Sebi would look into the question of uploading e-document of annual reports of those companies in the website of stock exchanges similar to company results.