The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on Thursday made
certain amendments to the equity listing agreement of publicly listed
companies. It said it has made these amendments to enhance the quality
of disclosures.
A company, after a public issue, will have to make public details of
its shareholding a day prior to its listing. It also said that the stock
exchanges should upload the same on their Web sites before the shares
of the company are listed.
SEBI also said that any listed companies whose capital restructuring
makes a change of more than two per cent to its paid-up share capital,
will have to file its revised shareholding with the stock exchanges
within ten days from the date of allotment of the shares that
constituted the restructuring.
It added that all listed companies should maintain a “functional Web
site” with all relevant updated information. The stock markets regulator
has also mandated that those corporates which have agreements with
media companies have to disclose such details on their Web sites and
also to the stock exchanges.
To help investors to manage their cash and securities flow, companies
will now have a pre-announced fixed pay date for payment of dividends
and for the credit of bonus shares.
From now on, those companies issuing depository receipts will have to
further segregate the details of the shares held by custodians into
‘promoter/promoter group' and ‘public'.
In order for the listed companies to meet the minimum public
shareholding, SEBI has said that companies can issue shares through
prospectus (primary market), offer shares for sale by its promoters or
by sale of shares by promoters through the secondary market. This is
just to align the Listing Agreement with the new changes to Securities
Contracts (Regulations) Rules.
SEBI has mandated uniform procedure for dealing with unclaimed shares
(both demat and in physical form). If there is no response to three
reminders by a registrar regarding unclaimed shares, the shares shall go
into the Unclaimed Suspense account. The issuer company shall
dematerialise the shares held in this account with one of the depository
participants. All benefits accruing on such shares shall be credited to
this account. The voting rights will remain frozen till the rightful
owner claims the shares.
src:BL