Weekend BSE Sensex registers 128 point loss
Mumbai: Black Friday, revisited the bourses as ICE stocks seemed to melt in tandem with old economy scrips, resulting in the 30-share BSE Sensex, plummeting 128 points to finish at 3905.90, a hefty drop of 3.18 per cent.

Market circles blamed the debacle on a combination of various factors, including an extended weekend ahead, as markets will remain closed on Monday due to Christmas. Friday being the last day of settlement also saw a massive unwinding by both FIIs and domestic operators, particularly in the technology sector, which led the fall, where huge positions have been built so far.

A section of the market also blamed the crash in the new economy segment to reports of a leading brokerage house downgrading the Indian infotech sector. This led to a crash in several infotech stocks led by Infosys. It was downhill all the way after that in other TMT stocks and their old economy brethren.

Infosys scrip led the crash, when the stock breached the Rs 6,000-mark to touch a near 7-month low of Rs 5,774.95 before settling at Rs 5,796.40, down 7.78 per cent or Rs 480.70 from its previous close.
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Sebi relaxes IPO norms, mutual fund regulations
New Delhi: Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has decided on a series measures including relaxation of IPO norms, continuous listing requirements for companies, amendments to mutual funds regulations and venture capital norms, in a bid to create a level playing field.

The Sebi board at its meeting in New Delhi slashed the minimum stake a company must offload in an initial public share offering (IPO) and tightened rules for calculating mutual funds’ net asset values. The changes will take effect early in the New Year. Sebi extended to all companies the right to offload just 10 per cent of their post-issue capital instead of the current minimum of 25 per cent. Earlier, only firms in the information, communication and entertainment sectors were allowed to offer 10 per cent.

The board also decided that the issue should be made only through Book Building method with allocation of 60 per cent to Qualified Institutional Buyers (QIBs).

These new guidelines would be applicable to all sectors and would replace the existing guidelines in this regard.
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NSE, BSE gear up for launch of CNS system
Mumbai: The National Stock Exchange (NSE) and the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) are set to introduce continuous net settlement (CNS), a facility, which allows a seller to defer his settlement obligation till the buyer demands delivery.

CNS would give the seller, who does not have ready shares to make delivery, more time to meet his settlement obligations, as it allows the seller to defer the settlement without having to face auction of shares short-delivered. The bourses are in the process of drawing up a list of scrips for introducing CNS based on the volume of transactions in each scrip and have already identified around 340 companies.

CNS will attract a similar margin, as in the case of asset liability management system. The idea is to allow CNS in scrips in rolling settlement mode for providing liquidity to scrips. Currently 163 scrips are available on mandatory rolling settlement system. CNS would be made available in 500 regularly traded scrips.

Both BSE and NSE are setting up the necessary software for introducing CNS, which is expected to be ready by mid-January.
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