Merchant Bankers Urged To Create Brand Equity

While referring to the book building process, Ranjan asked merchant bankers to first give it a try and then seek amendments if they faced problems.

So far nobody has come forward to take up book-building in equities. The quality of the services offered by merchant bankers will be tested if they experiment with the book building process, he added.

Ranjan came down harshly on merchant bankers and urged them to ensure discipline and integrity. The Indian investors are deprived of quality paper and merchant bankers are to a large extent responsible for this, he said.

Sebi is keen to make sure that merchant bankers have the capability and the expertise to ensure a superior quality paper in the market before the regulator gave up vetting of offer documents altogether, he said.

 

Once this happens, Sebi might consider doing away with the registration of merchant bankers and delegate the task to Ambi, which should emerge as the self regulatory organisation, Ranjan said. However this is still a long way, he added.

Non-fulfilment of underwriting commitment is a serious lapse on the part of the merchant bankers. It brings out the lack of discipline and disdain towards underwriting commitment, Ranjan said.

Nimesh Kampani, chairman of Ambi and J M Financial, urged the government to make it mandatory for Indian companies to appoint an Indian merchant banker as one of the lead managers for international offerings.

Five new directors were elected at the Ambi AGM. While N K Parikh, managing director of Mafatlal Finance and I C Jain, chairman, KJMC Financial, would represent the private sector merchant bankers, A R Barwe, managing director, SBI Caps and BoI Finance chief, R V Joshi, would represent the public sector merchant bankers. Sandip Presswala will represent the category II, III and IV merchant bankers.