Sebi chief's blames corp rivalry behind IPO complaints

Mind your own business. That's the direct message SEBI chairman UK Sinha is sending to Corporate India. Mitra Joshi of CNBC-TV18 reports that Sinha's patience with the increasingly common practise of companies spending time and energy in harming competition is running thin.

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UK Sinha, chairman, SEBI, says that why should you set up entities to look at what your competitor is doing, how to find fault with him and how to stop him from doing something.

A straight-talking UK Sinha, clearly indicating that he is not happy with companies stooping to new lows of one-up-manship. While he did not name names, he told the audience at the CII Conclave on Capital Markets that his office was seeing a bigger flood of complaints from competitors, especially regarding IPO filings, than investors.

"In the context of the IPOs, I'm finding that any company who is coming for IPO there are large number of complaints raised against the company and my gut feeling is that those complaints are not necessarily from investors, investor associations or even activist my feeling is that good portion of those complaints are also promoted by the competitors. Privately many corporate tell me that it has now become important for them that if they want to do business to set up a separate office to watch their competitors," says Sinha.

Sinha's tirade against such petty rivalry, which he considers depleting standards of corporate governance, did not go unnoticed.

AMB UP, Uday Kotak, vice chairman, Kotak Mahindra Bank, says that must says you have been more harsh on corporate than intermediaries this time.

But Sinha did not stop there. He also trained his tongue... Err, guns... On companies and promoters who he says are so interested in making a pretty penny even in areas of compliance with SEBI's rules, that the greater good of investors is taking a back-seat.

"We are seeing a high degree of stubbornness, two reputed law firms representative met me about three weeks ago on one particular transaction. They had come out with a particular structure which we felt was not doable and in the meeting we offered them an alternate, both the lawyers were very happy they said that I have full mandate from my clients we are ready to sign and we are going to submit the papers. After three weeks, I got the message yesterday that no they want the original thing to happen because the promoter is reluctant to make any concession. He wants to get the maximum last pie and whatever he had told his legal team or the advisors he is now going back on that," says Sinha.

Sinha's latest tongue-lashing is broadly in keeping with the theme of earlier diatribes -- put the investor first. But this time, he has gone one step further. He's not going to stand by and watch while corporate in-fighting and rivalry undermines the overall growth of corporate India.