Introduction of Automatic Process and Common Pool of Arbitrators for Stock Exchanges

Currently, the arbitration mechanism of the stock exchanges is decentralized i.e. the selection of arbitrators is done by the respective stock exchanges. However with a view to bring greater transparency and in order to protect the interest of the investors SEBI has made the following changes -

• List of arbitrators maintained by all the stock exchanges having nation wide terminals will be pooled centrally and will be known as "Common Pool" this will be displayed on the website of the stock exchanges
• The arbitrators will be chosen by the parties to the arbitration and the parties fails to choose the Arbitrator it will be chosen by an "Automatic Process" where neither the parties to the arbitration nor the concerned stock exchange will be directly involved. It will be done through automatic computer process
• The Automatic Process will also send a real time alerts to all the entities involved

Arbitration process is widely used by the parties and a centralized process will avoid manipulation. 

SEC Allowed companies to use Social Media

Recently SEC has allowed company's and its executives to use social media like Facebook, Twitter, etc. to communicate informations to the public.

This is considered to be a bold step with the increasing connect of the public with the social media. As per the press release SEC say's that using social media is almost equivalent to the press release and that the company's can use these media provided the investors know which outlet the company intends to use.

This step was taken by SEC as a result of a facebook post by the Cheif Executive of Netflix  in July stating that the streeming - video company has exceeded one billion hour in a month for the first time which resulted in a sharp increase in firms share price.

SEC took up the investing in December to find out if the post has violated the protocol which restrains the company's from selective disclosure. After several months of investigation SEC concluded that social media can be used as a medium to communicate information as long as they make it clear which media the company will be using.

Rationalisation of Debt Limits by SEBI

SEBI has eased the norms for debt limits of foreign institutional investors. This step has seen to be inline with the RBI policy to ratinalise the foreign investment in debt market.

The new circular issued by SEBI on 1st April 2013 states that the debt limits of FII will be classified into two categories -

Category	Amount in $ billion
Government Securities	25
Corporate Bonds	51

SEBI has clarified that eligible FII and QFI can invest in -

• Treasury Bills upto $5.5 billion within the limits of $25 billion and
• Commercial Papers upto $ 3.5 billion within the limit of $51 billion

Prior to this the debt limits were as under - 

Category	Sub-category	Amount
Government Securities	Government Debt - Old	$ 25 billion
	Government Debt - Long Term	$15 billion
Corporate Bonds	Corporate Debt Old FII	$20 billion
	Corporate Debt Old QFI	$1 billion
	Corporate Debt - Long Term	$5 billion
	Corporate Debt - Long Term Infra	$12 billion
	QFI Investment in Debt fund which invest in infra	$3 billion
	Investment in IDF	$10 billion

Other Modification made by this circular

1. Current SEBI auction mechanism of allocating debt limits for corporate bonds shall be replaced by the "on tap system" which is currently in force for infrastructure bonds
2. Current practice of Dissemination of fortnightly debt utilization status shall be discounted