 "Finance Minister Arun Jaitley strikes the gong at an event organised to formalise the merger of Forward Market Commission (FMC) with Sebi, in Mumbai, on September 28, 2015. Former FMC chairman Ramesh Abhishek (Left), Sebi chairman U K Sinha, and econ")
The several times I climbed ‘Everest’ in the past few years, I have never come away disappointed. Of late, it had become a dangerous place after a violent storm but not for everyone.
The Everest we are discussing is not that brutal stage of the tragic expedition featuring Jason Clarke and Josh Brolin. Our Everest is a non-descript building, a stone’s throw from the Marine Lines railway station on the Western Railway line in Mumbai. Somewhere near one of its third floor windows hung a black and white board, later turned maroon and yellow, saying Forward Markets Commission. FMC also had a symbol but it was too complicated to get registered in the mind.
The last two of its chairmen have had to endure among the most controversial and action-packed decades in its 60-year history. Both B C Khatua and Ramesh Abhishek were very accessible, and candid in their views. Without taking away from their own personalities, the Everest building probably played a role in making access easy for everyone.
It did not have those big automated iron gates, gun-toting guards and biometric access control systems. For a regulator that relied on an informer network for surveillance of the massive commodities market, accessibility was perhaps more important.
The registrar of companies (RoC), functioning in the same premises, had more restrictions. As one went up the little cramped lift, probably as old as FMC, made even smaller by the lift boy, the office of the regulator began even before one stepped out. The entire name of the Commission was embossed on the outer wall but one could only read Forward, the rest being out of focus. In the earlier days, tickers of all the three active electronic bourses used to run in the main reception hall. MCX's was the biggest and most prominent of all. On one of my last climbs, I noticed these were gone. The staff seemed a bit more friendly than before. Probably, they realised they'd soon lose their cozy little place in Everest and become lost as little cogs somewhere in the great Indian bureaucratic wheel.
The chairman was friendly as ever and geared up for the bigger things that are awaiting him in Delhi. Not many people survive the double acid test of defusing a Rs 5,600-crore scam and winding down the operations of an organisation older than oneself. Even in the last days, he was busy cleaning up to ensure a cleaner baton was handed over to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi).
Though there were some initial hiccups, Abhishek, who will go down in the history books as the last chairman of FMC, might move on a satisfied man. Some oldtimers say Everest was a reminder of Sebi’s days in the times of D R Mehta, when it used to work out of the Stock Holding Corporation of India building in Nariman Point, only a station away.
A lot has been written about how Sebi will go about doing this new job. The commodities market is a different animal. It needs a different mindset. It needs people who will get to the ground and get their hands dirty, as not everything might become obvious by looking at screens and spreadsheets. It is good that Rajeev Agarwal, a former 'Everester', will spearhead the house shifting. For journalists who were covering the commodities markets, the move out of Everest could mean more controls and less information. More gun-toting security personnel, more biometrics. More taxi trips to the Bandra Kurla Complex. A bit early to say if that is good or bad.
Everest, meanwhile, will continue to evince the interest of muckrakers but there might not be any climbing, as the RoC sits in the ground floor.
