Part ownership

Allowing fractional shares will benefit retail investors

The Union Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) are said to be discussing the issuance and ownership of fractional shares. While this is not permitted in India, it has become popular with retail investors in the United States, where the concept was borrowed from cryptocurrency trading, where a hundred-millionth of a bitcoin (1 “Satoshi”) can be traded. The International Financial Services Centres Authority (Ifsca), at Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT), has also experimented with fractions of shares in its “sandbox” but these are dollar-denominated.

Sebi and the MCA are looking only at the