Bharti begins US's SOX compliance move

Bharti Airtel, India's largest mobile phone service provider, has started an exercise of aligning the company with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), the United States' corporate governance code, which is widely considered a precursor to an overseas listing.

Confirming the SOX compliance exercise, a senior Bharti group executive, however, denied that the company was considering a foreign listing. "At this point we have no plans of listing in the United States," he said.

Bharti group Chairman Sunil Mittal also said that while there were no plans to list overseas, the company was one of a handful of those that give out quarterly audited results on both Indian and US GAAP (accounting norms).

The SOX compliance exercise, the senior Bharti executive added, was part of a larger effort to conform to global best practices. "We want our internal controls to be of the highest standard and benchmarked against SOX. We believe that we must set the best standards in corporate governance," he said.

Sanjay Hegde, executive director, PricewaterhouseCoopers, said that SOX compliance, a long-drawn and complex process, is mandatory for Indian firms that want to list on stock exchanges in the United States.

"An Indian firm has to be SOX-compliant for listing in America, including CEO and CFO certification for management assertion. However, companies are given a year to comply with some provisions," he said.

In 2003, Mittal had spoken of diluting up to 10 per cent for a listing in the US, since there would then be more participation from the international community and also because the investor base in the US was large.

Bharti Airtel today closed on the Bombay Stock Exchange at Rs 818.10, giving it a market cap of Rs 1,55,206 crore.