The chairman of SEBI, Tuhin Kanta Pandey, said that the market regulator is working with the National Stock Exchange to resolve the issue surrounding the delay of the NSE’s initial public offer. It might ease the way for the exchange’s public listing.
The NSE’s IPO was supposed to be India’s most high-profile IPO. It has been almost a decade trying to get regulatory clearance for listing.
Recently, the chair of the markets watchdog said that it wants to clarify that Sebi has been reluctant to allow the IPO. The rival bourse “BSE is already listed, so there’s no reason why NSE cannot be listed as well,” Pandey told Fortune India.
According to Pandey, the main issue is of governance, which is stopping the listing of NSE. “…what the governance structure is going to be and how it will evolve. There’s a need for greater clarity on that front,” he added.
“We will not allow commercial interest to take over the general public interest, and it is for the regulator to ensure that,” said Pandey in an industry event.
NSE applied for a listing for the first time in 2016, but due to regulatory concerns, it faced long pushback from SEBI.
In 2019, the markets regulator returned its documents over the co-location case, demanding to resolve that issue first. However, it has multiple times sought clearance from SEBI since then in 2019, 2020 twice, and in 2024.
However, the NSE settled a chapter of the co-location scam in October 2024 by paying a penalty of Rs 643 crore, but cases linked to the same controversy are still hanging in the Supreme Court. Till the time they are not resolved, SEBI is unwilling to give a thumbs up to the IPO.
However, NSE again started the process for listing and applied for a “no-objection” certificate.
Recently, in March, NDTV Profit reported that the country’s largest bourse could face a delay of up to two years in launching its IPO.