Sebi amends Operational Guidelines for Commercial Paper Listing

Capital markets regulator Sebi on Friday revised its operating guidelines related to the listing of commercial paper in order to achieve standardization in requirements.

To ease the compliance burden on listed entities, SEBI in August standardized existing procedures for the issuance and listing of non-convertible securities, securitized debt instruments, guarantee receipts, municipal debt securities and commercial paper.

In a prospectus, Sebi said that based on the feedback received from market participants and recent regulatory changes, in order to achieve standardization in requirements, some amendments are being made to the guidelines related to the listing of Commercial Papers (CP). An issuer planning to list a CP needs to send an application for listing with disclosures to the respective exchanges. Regarding the issuance, Sebi said the issuer needs to provide details of the current tranche including ISIN, amount, issue date, maturity, all credit ratings including unacceptable ratings, rating date, name of the credit rating agency, its validity period and the announcement of it. The classification is effective as of the date of issue, listing, and issuer and payment agent details.

Regarding the financial information, Sebi said the issuer needs to provide an audited or limited review of the consolidated and independent semi-annual financial information along with the auditor’s qualifications, if any, for the past three years with the latest available financial results, if the issuer has been in existence for three years and above.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) said the new framework will come into effect immediately.