All listed firms must have 25 % public holding by 2013: SEBI

The Securities & Exchange Board of India has decreed that both public and private sector companies will have to increase their public shareholding to at least 25 per cent by August 2013. There will be no relaxation of the guidelines, SEBI chairman U K Sinha said in Mumbai today.

"Companies will have to see that public shareholding is 25 per cent within this timeframe. For private listed companies it is June 2013 and for the public sector firms it is August 2013," Sinha told reporters after a BSE function.

''Some companies "feel that SEBI will relax this norm. But let me tell you I am going to make it difficult," he asserted.

Sinha said there are 181 non-government companies that do not meet the minimum shareholding norms. "Around Rs 27,000 crore will have to be mobilised by June 2013; while 16 PSUs (government-run enterprises) will have to mobilise Rs12,000 crore."

He said revamped norms for initial public offerings would be issued within four months; and guidelines on MMPS (manner of increasing and maintaining public shareholding in stock exchanges) would be out in the next two months.

Stating that the market regulator was not opposing high frequency trading (also called algorithmic trading), Sinha stressed, "We will have to ensure that risk part is well understood and enforced. And stock exchanges will have to take it seriously."