To strengthen corporate governance practices and disclosure requirements, Sebi on Friday proposed that listed companies should disclose the financial results to the exchanges within 30 minutes of approval by their boards.
At present, such disclosures need to made within 30 minutes from the conclusion of the board meeting.
This comes after industry chamber Ficci suggested that disclosure of financial results should be made within 30 minutes from the conclusion of the discussion on the agenda, rather than the conclusion of the board meeting.
In addition, the regulator proposed that the top 1,000 listed entities based on market capitalisation (calculated as on March 31 of every financial year) will formulate a dividend distribution policy which will be disclosed in their annual reports and on their websites.
Currently, this is applicable for top 500 listed companies.
To ease the compliance burden on listed companies, Sebi in a consultation paper has proposed that newspaper advertisement on notice of the board meeting to discuss financial results and quarterly statement of deviation or variation will no longer be required.
According to Sebi, all the filings made by listed entities under the LODR regulations are available on the stock exchange website, in addition to the entity's website, which is accessible anywhere, anytime at free of cost.
Hence, a separate newspaper advertisement on notice of the board meeting to discuss financial results, quarterly statement of deviation or variation is an additional burden on listed entities, it added.
Besides, Sebi suggested where it is not possible to use electronic mode of payment, 'payable-at-par' warrants or cheques will be issued. Under the proposal, the listed company will issue quarterly report to the stock exchange(s) on loss of share certificates and issue of duplicate certificates.
The regulator has sought comments from public till October 11 regarding the proposed amendments to LODR (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations.
The final norms will be put in place after taking into consideration views of all the stakeholders.
Besides, the regulator has aligned disclosure regarding to resolution plan/ restructuring of loan or borrowings from banks/financial institutions with the changes made by Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
Corporate Debt Restructuring scheme has been withdrawn by the apex bank and has been replaced with the Reserve Bank of India (Prudential Framework for Resolution of Stressed Assets) Directions, 2019.
