November 2008 - Posts - Initial Private Opinion

November 2008 - Posts

Poor quality of disclosures in India

Posted by Sandeep Parekh at 
Prof. Jayanth R Varma has written an article in yesterday's Financial Express on the infrequency of disclosure of the balance sheets in India even though the profit and loss statement is updated every quarter. In fact he understates the problem. Not only the balance sheet, but hundreds of other disclosures are not made once in a quarter, many not...

More>>

Long pain ahead in the world

Posted by Sandeep Parekh at 
The similarities of the present crisis with the 1929 era are looking eerie (more on that later). While any comparision with the past may be misleading, this surely is not a self correcting 1987 style crash . It's here to stay. Even if one were to concede that we have only a quarter of the problem of the 1929-1934 era, we are still looking at a very...

More>>

Obituary and Homage

Posted by Sandeep Parekh at 
Obituary : Mr. Anand S Bhatt, Anand bhai to all those who have known him, a senior partner at Wadia Ghandy & Co., a leading law firm, passed away at the Trident Hotel, Mumbai. Celebrating his life, extra-ordinary achievements as a lawyer and warm humour - by an alumnus of Wadia Ghandy. Homage : My respects and homage to all those brave people who...

More>>

Somali pirates to acquire Citigroup

Posted by Sandeep Parekh at 
You have to be living on the moon if you haven't read a single piece on Somali pirate and the financial sector humour. Here is a fake Bloomberg piece. Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size...

More>>

Lectures from the other world

Posted by Sandeep Parekh at 
Here is some interesting lecturing we Indians received a year back, as I look into my diary. On 29th Oct 2007, the US Treasury Secretary had come to the SEBI office. Guess what he spoke about for half an hour to senior SEBI officials. The benefits of non intervention by the government and regulators with market forces. I smile everytime I think about...

More>>

The group of 20's prescription to the world problems

Posted by Sandeep Parekh at 
The G-20 or the group of 20 is an association of 20 advanced and emerging countries who have agreed to come together to tackle the financial crisis. (Some trivia: the G20 only has 19 countries). The G20 was convened rather than the traditional G7 or the group of rich countries, to give legitimacy to tackle the international problem at a broader level...

More>>

Getting India back to high growth

Posted by Sandeep Parekh at 
Yesterday I moderated a panel at the India Economic Summit organised by the World Economic Forum and CII. It was titled " Securing India’s Future Growth in a World@Risk" Here is the official Press Release of the discussion at the panel: • Neeraj Bharadwaj • Pramod Bhasin • Ghanshyam Dass • Habil F. Khorakiwala • Sunil Mehta Moderated by •...

More>>

SEBI Annual Report 2008 - big fees and big pendency

Posted by Sandeep Parekh at 
The SEBI Annual Report 2007-08 is out today. Two notable things which stand out are a) steep increase in fees collected and b) large pendency in quasi judicial proceedings. Of course neither issue is new. Fees Collected (see Page 94 of the report) SEBI mainly operates out of the fees collected by it from transactions and intermediaries in the securities...

More>>

New SEBI member appointment - a dark pool

Posted by Sandeep Parekh at 
Reliable grapevine has it that the Government has invited applications for the post of 'whole time member' of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). A whole time member is the senior-most executive position in SEBI (Chairman of SEBI is also a whole time member under the statute). While this was expected, as one of the three positions...

More>>

US India Business Council conference call

Posted by Sandeep Parekh at 
Day before evening I had a conference call with members of the US-India Business Council organized by their financial services executive committee. I spoke about the following issues which are summarized below: Overview of Financial Climate in India: Though the money markets have not frozen up like some of the western ones did in October, there is a...

More>>

Unfairness of takeover amendments

Posted by Sandeep Parekh at 
I have written in today's Economic Times about the unfairness arising from the recent SEBI amendments to takeover regulations, a subject I have blogged about over the past 3 days. Share this post: email it! | del.icio.us! | digg it! | newsVine!

More>>

SME Exchange - unviable?

Posted by Sandeep Parekh at 
SEBI has come out with a " Framework for recognition and supervision of stock exchanges/platforms of stock exchanges for small and medium enterprises ". Though small and medium enterprise (SME) specific exchange platform has been talked about for years if not decades, for various reasons, the concept has never reached fruition. Several of...

More>>

New investment adviser on the block

Posted by Sandeep Parekh at 
Today's Economic Times reports (I of course assume the reporting is accurate) - "The finance ministry has deferred its plan to allow only those companies with 25% minimum public ownership to stay listed, till the stock market comes out of the bearish phase." and "It is understood the government does not want to force promoters to...

More>>

Creeping capitulation - takeover regulation amendments

Posted by Sandeep Parekh at 
If you had any doubts about my views of the perversity of the SEBI action on relaxing the creeping acquisition limits (blogged yesterday, linked here ), take a look at what the Hong Kong regulator has said about similar lobbying efforts by promoters, it is probably more hard hitting than what I said yesterday: "The Takeovers Panel by a substantial...

More>>

The new amendments to the takeover regulations - misguided or sloppy? Yes.

Posted by Sandeep Parekh at 
SEBI has once again played around with the numbers in the takeover regulations. In light of the recent downward movement of prices, it seems that SEBI is attempting to make it easier for promoters to acquire shares from the market without making an open offer to the public shareholders. To give a brief background, the securities market regulator has...

More>>

More Posts Next page »