New Sebi boss has lot on his plate

Mumbai, March 1: Ajay Tyagi today began his innings as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) amid a clutch of challenges, ranging from developing the commodity markets to ensuring better corporate governance and handling alleged violations in access of servers at the National Stock Exchange (NSE).

Tyagi is the ninth chairman of Sebi and takes over charge from U.K. Sinha, who demited office after a six-year tenure.

Fifty-eight year old Tyagi, a 1984 batch IAS officer of the Himachal Pradesh cadre, has been appointed for three years. Tyagi has experience of the capital market as he had handled this division in the finance ministry.

Experts say Tyagi will have his hands full. The regulator will have to take action on the alleged unfair access to the co-location server at the NSE. Sebi began to probe the matter in early 2015 after it received complaints that some brokers were allegedly getting preferential access through co-location facility, which allowed market participants to have spaces close to the exchange servers, thereby enabling them faster access to data feed of an exchange.

Reports say a city-based brokerage may soon face action from the regulator. In the coming days, Sebi could also come up with higher penalty for misusing algorithm trades.

Sebi, which also regulates the commodity markets, will have to come up with rules to further develop this segment.

Some of Tyagi’s other challenges include improving the corporate bond market and corporate governance standards at listed firms.

While the regulator under Sinha announced measures such as real estate investment trusts (REITs) and infrastructure investment trusts (InVit), the former Sebi chief had expressed regret that not a single REIT or InVIT was launched.

Tyagi was joint secretary in the ministry of environment, forest and climate change before joining the finance ministry in November 2014 as additional secretary. He has also worked in the ministries of petroleum and natural gas, steel and rural development.

A native of Uttar Pradesh, he had done post graduation in economics. He did his masters in public administration from Harvard and holds a masters degree in technology (computer science).

Besides regulating the stock exchanges, Sebi supervises various kinds of market entities, including brokers, mutual funds, FIIs, rating agencies and investment bankers as also thousands of listed companies.