Government appoints Ajay Tyagi as new Sebi chief

Ajay Tyagi will be the ninth Sebi chairman and will be taking over from U.K.Sinha

The government on Friday said it appointed Ajay Tyagi, an additional secretary in the finance ministry, as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi).

The cabinet appointments committee said Tyagi, a 1984 batch Indian Administrative Service officer of the Himachal Pradesh cadre, will serve as the Sebi chief for five years or until the age of 65, whichever is earlier.
Tyagi, who will be the ninth Sebi chairman, will take over from U.K. Sinha, the second-longest serving chief of the capital markets regulator after D.R. Mehta.
Sinha became Sebi chief in 2011 with a three-year term and was later given a two-year extension which was to end on 17 February 2016.
Sinha was later given a further extension until 1 March 2017.
Tyagi will replace Sinha at a time when the Indian capital markets are facing subdued inflows after foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) heavily sold domestic equities and debt in November and December last year.
FPIs, often considered key drivers of the Indian market, pulled out funds worth around $9.5 billion during the two months, following a steep jump in the price of the dollar.

Sebi is currently in the process of organizing the commodity derivatives market, reviving trade on commodity bourses and streamlining norms to avoid default risks after the Forward Markets Commission (FMC) merged with it in September 2015.
Tyagi will have to deal with issues arising from the listings of stock exchanges. While Asia’s oldest bourse, BSE Ltd, listed on the rival National Stock Exchange (NSE) on Friday, NSE plans to list its shares on BSE early in the financial year beginning 1 April. NSE has filed its share sale prospectus with the regulator as its existing investors look to dilute a 22.5% stake through an initial public offering which could raise as much as Rs10,000 crore.
On 28 January, Sebi instituted a three-tier system to monitor compliance and address conflicts that may arise from one stock exchange listing on another. The final oversight will lie with an independent conflict resolution committee that will be constituted by Sebi, the regulator has said.
The first order monitoring will be done by the listing department of the stock exchange on which another bourse gets listed.
As a second level check, Sebi said, the independent oversight committee of the bourse on which another exchange gets listed will monitor and deal with any possible conflicts.
If the listed exchange is aggrieved, it may appeal to this committee.
Additionally, Sebi will constitute an independent conflict resolution committee which will monitor and review matters on a regular basis. If the listed stock exchange feels aggrieved even with the decision of the independent oversight committee, it may appeal to this Sebi committee, the regulator has said.
On 31 July 2015, Tyagi was appointed to the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) central board of directors, replacing finance secretary Rajiv Mehrishi. At the time Tyagi, an additional secretary, was one rung below Mehrishi in the department of economic affairs.
However, after a little more than three months, Tyagi was replaced by Shaktikanta Das, secretary, department of economic affairs, as the government nominee on the RBI board.
Before his appointment in the department of economic affairs, Tyagi was a joint secretary in the ministry of environment, forests and climate change.