Financial Tech shares slump, exchange unit halts forward trading

By Siddesh Mayenkar and Himank Sharma

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Shares in Financial Technologies slumped 64.5 percent on Thursday after a commodity exchange it owns, National Spot Exchange Ltd, suspended trade in most of its forward contracts and deferred payments on client trades.

NSEL said in a statement late on Wednesday that it had suspended trading in forwards and delayed settlements of contracts for 15 days, citing a fall in volumes after India's commodities regulator asked exchanges two weeks ago not to launch new forwards contracts.

Financial Technologies (FTIL), which also owns stakes in bourses elsewhere, such as the Singapore Mercantile Exchange, said it would not face any financial liability from the suspension of trading at NSEL.

"FTIL states that this action of NSEL does not entail any financial liability on FTIL and that the business of FTIL is as usual," Jignesh Shah, chairman and managing director at Financial Technologies, said in a statement.

NSEL chief executive Anjani Sinha said in an interview with TV channel CNBC-TV 18 that the exchange had 62 billion rupees worth of physical stock compared to total outstanding contracts of 55 billion rupees.

The Indian government issued a statement late on Thursday saying regulators, including the Forward Markets Commission and Securities and Exchange Board of India, were "assessing the situation" after NSEL had suspended trading.

The government said regulators would ask NSEL for more information "regarding the rationale" of its decision to suspend forward trading and the exchange's "plan of action for meeting the settlement obligations of all the open contracts".

Regulators were also ready "to take necessary action to protect the interests of the market participants in NSEL", the government said.

(Reporting by Siddesh Mayenkar and Himank Sharma; Editing by Tony Munroe and Dale Hudson)