SEBI to Announce new Rules for Insider Trading, Share Buyback

Capital market regulator SEBI on Tuesday said new guidelines to curb insider trading and new rules for share buyback would be announced shortly.

“We will shortly come out with new norms to check insider trading and new guidelines for share buyback,” said SEBI chairman U.K. Sinha, adding that the existing insider trading regulations were old.

“Lot of new developments are taking place and the existing laws are old to deal with them,” Mr. Sinha said at an CII interactive session here.

He said that SEBI had set up an expert group and by the end of this year, new insider trading regulations would be announced.

Regarding share buyback, Mr. Sinha said: “We have seen (some) companies resorting to buyback of shares and are doing so to manipulate the share prices and not for rewarding the investors“.

“We have prepared a discussion paper and received comments from the people. Soon new regulations will be announced,” he said.

SEBI was also working on issues like the role of independent directors for board-level corporate governance, related party transactions and methodology for fixing of compensation of top personnel of companies.

Keywords: SEBI, insider trading, market regulation, share buyback

The Hindu, New Delhi, 27-03-2013