Transparency in governance

Sebi's new rules will help minority shareholders

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has set significantly higher standards of transparency and corporate governance for listed stocks by amending the Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements (LODR) and introducing several critical changes. While these will improve transparency and disclosures by companies and help protect minority shareholder interests, some of the provisions related to how listed companies must respond to media coverage and to third-party sales of companies may be difficult to comply with in practice. After defining “mainstream media” quite broadly to cover both registered newspapers and social-media platforms defined as “intermediaries” under the information technology (IT)