The School for Corporate Governance (SCG) of the National Institute of Securities Markets (NISM) along with BSE Ltd (Bombay Stock Exchange) had organized a Conference on “Recent Changes in Insider Trading Regulations” on June 15, 2019 at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi.

SEBI has recently made comprehensive amendments to SEBI (Prohibition of Insider Trading) Regulations, 2015 and these changes are already effective from April 1, 2019. Some of the important amendments include maintenance of a structured digital database of designated persons, institutional mechanism within the listed companies for prevention of insider trading, separate code of conduct for fiduciaries, etc.

In this background, NISM and BSE had organized this Conference for the Board of Directors, Compliance Officers and Company Secretaries of listed companies. The Conference was to enable them to understand the rationale behind the Regulations and also to share with them the practices being adopted by top listed companies in complying with the new Regulations.

Mr.V.S.Sundaresan, Chief General Manager, SEBI, explained to the participants about the intent of the new amendments and apprised them that the changes were necessitated on account of few cases dealt with by the Investigation Department of SEBI

Mr Lait Kumar, Partner, J Sagar Associates, provided legal perspective of the recent changes to SEBI (Prohibition of Insider Trading) Regulations, 2015. He requested the participants to make note of the legal clarity on many issues such as definition of insider, scope, etc., in the new provisions.

Mr.M.Krishnamoorthy, Member of Faculty, NISM, shared with the participants about the system and practices being adopted by top listed companies for complying with the recent changes to SEBI (Prohibition of Insider Trading) Regulations, 2015.

Ms Mohini Varshneya, Partner, Coporate Professionals Capital Private Ltd, shared her experience as to how listed companies have to deal with the amendments by putting appropriate framework in place.

This was followed by a Panel Discussion to throw light on the nitty-gritty of the recent amendments. Mr.M.Krishnamoorthy, Faculty, NISM, was the moderator of the panel discussion and the panelists were:

• Mr V S Sundaresan, Chief General Manager, SEBI

• Mr Lait Kumar, Partner, J Sagar Associates

• Ms Mohini Varshneya, Partner, Coporate Professionals Capital Private Ltd

Around 90 participants from 50 listed companies had attended the Conference and benefitted from the deliberations. All the sessions were well received by the participants and helped them in understanding the nuances of the latest amendments.