Twenty sub-accounts seek FII status, says SEBI

24 October 2007

"We have 34 P-note issuing entities. Out of them, some are already FIIs. Those sub-accounts that were issuing P-notes have all applied for conversion," SEBI chairman M. Damodaran said.

"Everyone who we expected to write to us, have all written," he said.

SEBI is planning to tighten up rules on unregistered foreigners investing in the stock market through participatory notes, because it says such flows are not transparent. SEBI will hold a board meeting on Thursday to consider the proposals.

The Sebi chief, who had an interaction with foreign institutional investors (FIIs) yesterday, held a closed-door meeting with brokers on the proposed guidelines to curb foreign fund inflows through participatory notes.

Around 25 brokers participated in the meeting. The brokers said they were asked to give their concerns about the PN issue. Beyond that, they were tight-lipped on the proceedings of the meeting.

During his meeting with FIIs yesterday, Damodaran had said that Sebi had already received lot of responses from both domestic and foreign investors to its proposal early last week to curb inflows through PNs in India''s stock market.