Sebi takes a dim view of misuse of pool account
New Delhi: SEBI and the major stock exchanges have launched a concentrated effort to the clean up the misuse of the pool account by brokers and operators for short selling.
Thus the quantum of shares available in the account is now less than a quarter of what it was about a month ago.

Sebi chairman D R Mehta that there had been a drastic decrease in the size of the pool account following the cleaning up operations in the last two weeks adding that shares of individual investors lying in brokers’ pool accounts were misused in some cases and Sebi had decided to put an end to that practice.
Sebi issued a directive on April 2 saying that all shares lying in the pool account would have to be immediately transferred to the individual accounts of investors and any delay would attract heavy penalties.

Another fact that has cut down on the misuse is that investors have also started demanding that shares be given back from the pool account, which has further cut down the misuse.
Brokers use a pool account for keeping the deliveries for clients before they are sent to their individual accounts.

Sebi has introduced measures to restore confidence among investors. Foremost amongst which is a code of ethics for directors and functionaries of stock exchanges, which would prevent presidents, vice presidents and treasurers from carrying out `proprietary trading’ either for themselves or for their dependents while holding office.
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NAVs of MFs touch rock bottom
New Delhi: Where will the small investors go? With term deposits and small savings rates down, what could be worse a small investor might ask.

Well, the answer is; the greatest preference of small investors, the mutual funds are also down and some have touched base levels.
The NAVs of more than 20 equity schemes launched last year have touched their lowest levels ever while some have even fallen below their par value.

As a result, the corpus size of these funds has also eroded sharply and they are witnessing capital erosion in excess of Rs 1,700 crore.

Besides sagging NAVs, mutual funds are facing a massive capital erosion in the form of redemptions and decreasing value of scrips they are invested in.

A P Kurian of the Association of Mutual Funds of India said markets in the last few trading sessions had created a havoc on account of Ketan Parekh getting arrested and uncertainty following his arrest.

To take a glimpse at the NAVs of selected mutual fund schemes on April 6-- The Prudential ICICI Tech Fund, witnessed a drop in NAV to 3.19 and a drop in corpus to Rs 259.3 crore from Rs 500 crore.

The KP Internet Opportunity Fund’s NAV dropped to 4.9 and the corpus fell from Rs 525 crore to Rs 281 crore, a drop of 46 per cent.
The Alliance New Millennium posted a drop in NAV to 4.57 and a reduction in corpus to Rs 281.3 crore from Rs 542 crore.
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