The guidelines for listing of municipal bonds and setting up a global financial hub within the country on the lines of Singapore and Dubai, are expected to help raise funds for business and infrastructure projects.
According to the regulator, conversions will be exempt from takeover rules and banks can convert debt to equity without making mandatory tender offers to minority shareholders.
Draft rules were also approved, which are expected to enable municipal governments to sell bonds easily to fund construction of roads, bridges and hospitals.
In addition to these, the regulator also announced a roadmap for the new fiscal regarding new norms which will help young entrepreneurs to raise funds by listing start-ups and crowd-sourcing.
The new requirements, which come amid Sebi’s concerns that Indian companies do not provide proper disclosure, are aimed at checking a widespread practice of selectively information leakage.
Sebi also approved a set of norms for setting up of stock exchanges and other capital market infrastructure for the creation of India’s first International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) in Gujarat’s GIFT City.
The norms are aimed at creating an IFSC within the country and allow companies outside India to raise money in foreign currencies by issuing and listing their equity shares on the stock exchanges within the center.
According to a Sebi official, the details would be published soon.
