SEBI’s new rule to give guaranteed minimum number of shares to retail investors in IPO

17 Aug 2012 Evaluate

Market regulator, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has made several changes to the rules governing MFs, IPOs and fund distributors. Retail investors have been taken care of in its latest decision, SEBI plans to usher in electronic IPOs by tapping broker terminal networks, though mutual fund investments have became more expensive. The latest measures also included relief for companies struggling to meet the minimum public holding norms of 25% when it allowed them to issue bonus and rights shares to meet the requirements. The government had mandated that by June 2013 promoters of listed companies should not hold more than 75% stake.

Taking note of the ailing mutual fund industry and its woes like, lack of penetration of mutual fund products, inadequate distribution network, need for greater alignment of the interest of various stakeholders, regulation of distributors and issues concerning investor protection, the market regulator has approved some immediate steps, to accord flexibility and bring cost effectiveness, fungibility of Total Expense Ratio (TER) is allowed. To improve the geographical reach of mutual funds and bring in long-term money from smaller towns, asset management companies (AMCs) are now allowed to charge additional TER (up to 30 bps), depending on the extent of new inflows from locations other than the top 15 cities. SEBI has also recommended to the government to offer equity mutual fund investors the same benefit of taxation proposed under the Rajiv Gandhi Equity Savings Scheme. It is believed that some of these measures could lift the morale of the mutual fund industry.

Further, with a view to increase the reach of IPOs to investors across the country and affording minimum allotment to a larger number of applicants, there were lots of measures announced, including widening of the distribution network of IPOs, in addition to the existing channels, the nationwide broker network of stock exchanges at more than 1000 locations will be made available for distributing IPOs in electronic form, the reach of ASBA would be enhanced by mandating all ASBA banks to provide the facility in all their branches in a phased manner. The share allotment system will be modified to ensure that every retail applicant, irrespective of his application size, gets allotted a minimum bid lot, subject to availability of shares in aggregate.

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