The petition filed by the president, Investors' Grievances Forum (IGF), Kirit Somaiya against the CRB group companies has been adjourned to October 14. At today's hearing, counsel for CR Bhansali, Niteen Pradhan, urged the court to dismiss the petition which seeks action against regulatory authorities such as Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Securities Exchange Board of India (Sebi) for their alleged apathy which led to the multi-crore scam. He submitted to the bench, consisting of chief justice M B Shah and justice Y S Jahagirdar, that the petition should be dismissed since a scheme for paying back the investors of CRB Capital Markets had already been submitted to the Delhi high court. The scheme is reportedly filed in a winding-up petition filed by RBI against CRB Capital Markets. The counsel for IGF, Janak Dwarkadas, opposed Bhansali's contention to dismiss the petition on the ground that the scheme was restricted to only the investors of CRB CapitalMarkets, the parent company and not the investors of the remaining 133 CRB group companies. He submitted that the IGF was interested in investors of all the 133 satelite companies which allegedly have duped investors of around Rs 550 crore.

Geojit demat list up to 53 :

In a trendsetting move, south India's largest depository participant, Geojit Securities has expanded to 53, the list of securities where its clients will be able to sell only demat shares from January 4, 1999 onwards. The depository participant which has over 4,000 retail accounts in the depository, has gone a step ahead and announced that it will not take any account opening fee, dematerialisation and custody fee for 43 securities (in addition to the 10 announced earlier by Sebi), till such time these scrips are included by Sebi in the compulsory demat trading list.

UTI to better investor relations :

The Unit Trust of India (UTI) has kicked-off a major exercise to revamp its business processes with an eye on betterinvestor relations. Three global consultancy giants - Price Waterhouse Coopers, McKinsey and Arthur Andersen have been asked to carry out a preliminary exercise to outline the deficiencies and suggest ways in which these can be rectified. Once the preliminary exercise is through, one of the three consultancy firms will be given the mandate to implement the project. The firms are currently frequenting various branch offices of UTI to analyse the changes required to be made in the existing process.

109 JSE members suspended : No less than 109 members of the Jaipur Stock Exchange Limited (JSEL) have been suspended following their failure to honour the capital adequacy norms. Under the JSEL rules, a memeber broker is required to deposit Rs 2 lakh towards the capital adequacy. In addition to 109 suspended members, JSEL has declared another 24 members as defaulters. Yet another eight members have been expelled from the local bourse.

Reshuffle improves India Advantage Fund returns : There are indications thatthe recent reshuffle in its portfolio have yielded positive returns for India Advantage Fund, which is managed by Birla Capital International AMC (Mauritius) Limited. Dollar returns for the six month period ended on September 1,1998 have improved to 9.56 per cent compared to -2.96 per cent for the last one year, according to Micropal. The India sector returns, according to Micropal, averaged -5.66 per cent in the last six months and -21.57 per cent for the last one year. India Advantage Fund, which was launched in August 1996, had an asset size of $12.28 million on September 1,1998 against $13.3 million on June 30,1998. Compared to its equity portfolio on March 31,1998 the number of major holdings have come down to about 25 from over 30 scrips.

Demat trades worth Rs 48 lakh on NSE and BSE:

A total of 0.27 lakh shares valued at Rs 48 lakh were traded in the demat segment on the National Stock Exchange and the Bombay Stock Exchange together today. On the NSE, L&T traded 5,320 shares valued at Rs20.28 lakh in 18 trades, BPCL traded 3,600 shares worth Rs 9.94 lakhs in a single trade, RIL traded 3,253 shares valued at Rs 4.01 lakh in 37 trades and 5,250 shares of ICICI valued at Rs 3.62 lakh transacted in 13 trades. On the BSE, Hoechst Marion traded 3,500 shares valued at Rs 12.25 lakh in 2 trades a National Electronic Settlement and Transfer (NEST) release said here today.

Equities firm up on NSE on hectic support :

Equities rose sharply on the National stock exchange on hectic buying from operators and Financial Institutions (FIs), though Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) were reported to have sold heavily. FIIs bought shares worth Rs 4.46 crore but sold shares amounting to Rs 23.34 crore. FIs and mutual funds, however, picked up shares valued at Rs 11.96 crore while pressing sales to the tune of Rs 5.67 crore, as per the provisional figures released by the NSE. The s&P Cnx nifty opened steady at 900.20 and advanced further to close at 920.50 as against last Friday's close of899.70, netting a gain of 20.80 points. CNX nifty junior and s&P Cnx defty gained 10.95 points and 16.70 points to close at 1474.35 and 750.20 respectively. S&P CNX 500 and CNX Midcap 200 also improved by 12.33 and 6.76 points to close at 617.24 and 523.39 respectively. The total volume of business was up at Rs 1296.15 crore involving 552.20 lakh shares and 1,75,208 trades. Debentures turnover was Rs 11.06 lakh.

Rupee ends mildly lower against dollar :

The rupee ended mildly lower against the US greenback on late demand for dollars by a large state-run bank and a few corporates in generally quiet and thin trade at the interbank foreign exchange (forex) market. The Indian currency closed at Rs 42.51/52 per dollar, a mere one paisa decline from weekend levels of Rs.42.50/51 after touching an intraday high of Rs.42.48/50 on steady dollar sales by corporates and exporters. It opened at Rs.42.49/51. Rupee-dollar outright spot dealings were extremely dull and range-bound in the absence of freshmarket-moving factors. Adequate dollar supplies owing to export proceeds and inward remittances from mid-East Gulf over the weekend gave the rupee underlying support but spot-dollar purchases from the state bank of India (sbi) and some other banks put renewed mild pressure on the rupee, dealers said.

Malaysia cuts banks' rates margin:

Malaysia's central bank on Monday cut the maximum margin on interest rates for banking institutions in line with its easing monetary stance, and said it would relax exchange controls in the derivates market. Bank Negara Malaysia governor Ali Abul Hassan Sulaiman said banks were now required to reduce the maximum margin between the quoted base lending rate and the rate they charge customers to 2.5 percentage points from 4.0.