Net outstanding positions shoot up
Mumbai: Huge outstandings in a select number of stocks, shows how much the market is overbought by. The value touched Rs.2,100 crore during the week.

This amount is the net outstanding long positions on the Bombay Stock Exchange. The major stocks which have huge outstandings are Ranbaxy, Pentafour, MTNL, Satyam, Reliance, Zee, ITC and Digital.
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Capital Markets committee allows short-selling by FIIs
Mumbai: The capital markets committee, headed by Reserve Bank of India governor Bimal Jalan has allowed covered short-selling by foreign institutional investors. This means that FIIs can sell short, to the extent that they have shares to back them.

The FIIs had so far not been allowed to participate in borrowing through the securites lending and borrowing module. This borrowing could be also against global depository receipts sent for conversion. Now, the FIIs will able to sell short if they can cover their short sales.

The other members of the committee were D R Mehta, chairman, Securities and Exchange Board of India, and E A S Sarma secretary, department of economic affairs.
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UTI’s flagship may come under Sebi
Mumbai: Sometime during the next week, the Securities and Exchange Board of India will start talks with the Unit Trust of India, which will bring the latter’s remaining schemes, particularly its flaghsip -- the US-64 -- under its purview, according to a report in the Business Standard.

UTI’s other schemes launched before 1994, governed so far by the UTI Act, will also be brought under Sebi. Close to 25 of UTI’s schemes are so far not regulated by Sebi.

Sebi wants to make sure that UTI’s schemes’ portfolio complies with Sebi regulations. Some of the areas where the UTI Act had allowed UTI to invest were real estate and unlisted debentures. Sebi Act does not allow investments to be made in such instruments.
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Call rates move higher
Mumbai: Friday being the reporting day, traditional lenders to the money market stayed away yesterday. This sent the call rates up. The prices of securities continued gliding downwards, after they spurted shortly during the beginning of the week.

The six-month forward premium closed at 5.58 per cent as against the 5.49 per cent on Wednesday.
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MF panel recommends investment cap
Mumbai: The committee on mutual fund regulation and development, headed by B G Deshmukh, has recommended that mutual fund’s investments should be restricted to a certain percentage of their net asset value.

The committee has recommended that a mutual fund should be allowed to invest up to a maximum of 10 per cent of its NAV in the share capital of a single company, 15 per cent in case of debt, five per cent in case of an open-ended fund investing in unlisted securities and 15 per cent for un-rated debt   instruments.
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Grasim issue gets good subscription
Mumbai: Grasim Industries Ltd., which had come out with a non-convertible debenture issue has been oversubscribed.

The company had adopted the book building route and the cut-off is expected to be around 12.6 per cent. ICICI Securities and HSBC Securities are the lead arrangers for the issue.
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Sebi wants to resolve pending demat requests
Mumbai: Leading depository participants and registrars have been called up by Sebi for finding a solution to the backlog created, owing to a flurry of requests for dematerialisation of shares.

Leading depository participants in the country such as HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, HSBC and BOI Shareholding will be meeting Sebi. Sebi will follow this meeting up with a meeting with the registrars. This was stated by the Sebi executive director, Pratip Kar.
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BSE to help investors
Mumbai: According to a report in the Business Standard, the Bombay Stock Exchange is suggesting changes to be made to the company law whereby penalty can be imposed on erring companies.

The BSE president, Anand Rathi who made representations in this regard to Ram Jethmalani, Union Law Minister and to the Company Law Board, said that suggestions were in the nature of penalty for delay in transferring shares, non-despatch of bonus or rights shares and non-payment of dividend.
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MSE, other bourses want link to CSE
Calcutta: Following the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s announcement to support interlinking of stock exchanges, The Madras Stock Exchange has written to the Calcutta Stock Exchange for establishing a connection to each other. An interface software would link the two stock exchanges, so that brokers in both stock exchanges would have access to each other’s hub.

The Ludhiana and Hyderabad stock exchanges too, want to get connected to the Calcutta Stock Exchange.

Sebi had announced this move so as to support the survival of stock exchanges in a competitive environment. It seems that around eight small stock exchanges in the country seem to on the verge of shutting down or atleast in very bad shape.
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BSE’s ‘Vision 2005’ plans
Mumbai: Renowned management consultancy firm, PriceWaterhouseCoopers will be undertaking a study to find out a benchmark for the best practices followed at the leading global stock exchanges. These include New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, London Stock Exchange and the Singapore/Tokyo stock exchanges.

The scope of the study would include technology, products offered, trading systems, risk-management practices, clearing and settlement procedures, and norms for the stock exchange board.

The report would then be implemented over a period of five years.
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