KNOWLEDGE ARCHIVES

Market rumours move at speed today. Social posts, news sites, and print outlets push stories in minutes. Traditional compliance teams often lag.

Most companies even today treated ESG as an annual reporting task. The sustainability team collected the numbers, the compliance team checked them, and the report went to the regulator, after a once-over by the board.

Governance does not start when directors sit down and end when they leave the room. Decisions made in the boardroom

Most listed companies have insider trading policies. Designated persons (DPs) submit disclosures - either into the SDD directly or to the Company Secretary (CS) team for entry.

Too often, PIT compliance is approached as a procedural formality. Every box on the compliance checklist appears neatly checked. Yet enforcement actions continue to rise.

Every successful business plans for the future. The best decisions are made early, long before they become urgent. Sustainability is one of those decisions.

For a long time, many listed companies have relied on their Registrar and Transfer Agents (RTAs) for a broad range of compliance-related functions, including tools for SEBI PIT Compliance.

Most listed companies have adopted some form of governance software. Board portals. Compliance trackers. Document management tools.

Now suppose that a rumour regarding your company gets aired on a financial news channel at 9:15 AM. By 9:30 AM, your stock price moves significantly against the benchmark index.

A compliance officer at a mid-sized listed company once described a recurring moment in his work: a Designated Person calls him minutes before placing a trade, asking if it is fine to go ahead, simply because a colleague mentioned the company was "in talks about something."

Most insider trading compliance failures are not caused by bad intent; they are caused by operational lacunae, the gaps between what your policy says and what your systems actually do.

Your compliance team sent the trading window circular on time. Pre-clearance requests were processed. The UPSI log exists somewhere in a shared folder. By most counts, that looks like SEBI PIT compliance.

When I wrote on August 27, 2025 about the US challenge facing Bharat’s Boards, I highlighted how the US responded to Japan’s rise after 1945—and eventually outpaced both Japan and Germany by investing aggressively in manufacturing, technology, and innovation.

Bharat’s business community can choose one of two options. One, wring their hands. Two, grow their businesses in friendlier geographies, in innovative ways. The second can only happen with ‘terrible resolve’.

On March 10, 2025, per Reuters, IndusInd Bank declared that it expects a 2.35% decline in its net worth as of December 2024 due to discrepancies in its derivative accounts found during an internal review.

In this article, we discuss good governance of businesses. Especially, large businesses run by entities funded by scrips listed on Bharat’s bourses.

IFCo stands for Intermediary and Fiduciary entities. Intermediaries include entities like Banks, Insurance companies, broking firms, merchant banks, portfolio investors, and others regulated by SEBI.

SEBI’s ‘habit changing’ Prohibition of Insider Trading (PIT) Regulations Misconception 1 – UPSI data entry is CS’ responsibility

All listed companies and most large public companies (even if un-listed) are legally abided to conduct an Annual Board Evaluation exercise.