10 FIRMS GOT SEBI NOD FOR RIGHTS ISSUES

Ten companies, including Bajaj Finance, Kesoran Industries and Alok Industries, have got market regulator Sebi's nod since the beginning of this year for issuance of 'rights' shares worth over Rs 2,200 crore to their existing shareholders. In rights issue, shares are issued by the companies to their existing investors as per their holding at a pre- determined price and ratio. As per the latest data available with Sebi (Securities and Exchange Board of India), it has given green signal to as many as 10 rights issues, together worth upto Rs 2,206 crore, since January 1, 2013. Of these 10 issues, Sebi issued its final observations on the draft offer documents of one company this month itself, while the regulator issued observations for five firms in March and two firms each in February and January. The draft documents for most of these issues were with the regulator between June and December 2012. Issuance of 'observations' on offer documents by Sebi is considered as a clearance to the issuer to go ahead with the share issues through routes like IPOs, FPOs and rights issue. The market watchdog has approved Bajaj Finance rights issue worth up to Rs 750 crore, Alok Industries (up to Rs 551 crore), Kesoram Industries (up to Rs 500 crore), Golden Goenka Fincorp (upto Rs 131 crore), Matrix World Wide (about Rs 112 crore), Uniphos Enterprises (Rs 75 crore), Hitachi Home & Life Solutions (India) Ltd (up to Rs 55 crore). Among other rights issues are Food and Inns (upto Rs 15.50 crore), Waterbase Ltd (Rs 13 crore) and Dynacons Systems & Solutions Ltd (Rs 4 crore). Individually, Sebi received the draft offer document for Bajaj Finance rights issue, through lead manager JM Financial Ltd on November 22, last year and issued its 'observations' on January 8, 2013. Further, the regulator received draft offer documents for Alok Industries rights issue on September 28 last year and issued its observations on January 16 this year. SBI Capital is the lead manager for this issue. The draft offer documents for Kesoram Industries issues were received by Sebi on November 9 last year and the observations were issued on March 21, 2013. Sebi had received draft documents of Media Matrix World Wide Ltd and Golden Goenka Fincorp Ltd on August 30 and September 27 last year and issued observation on February 25 and April 3, respectively. Notably, Sebi received draft documents of Uniphos Enterprises on December 31, 2010 and issued its observation more than two years later on March 18, 2013.