Measures in place to address excess volatility: Sebi on Adani crisis

It is committed to ensuring market integrity and its structural strength, said Sebi on Adani row.

New Delhi: The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on Saturday said, "Unusual price movement in the stocks of a business conglomerate has been observed in the past week." Amid a controversy over a meltdown in Adani Group stocks, regulator Sebi said it is committed to ensuring market integrity and that the markets continue to have the appropriate structural strength to function in an uninterrupted, transparent and efficient manner as has been the case so far.

Without naming Adani Group specifically, in a statement SEBI said, "During the past week, unusual price movement in the stocks of a business conglomerate has been observed. As part of its mandate, SEBI seeks to maintain the orderly and efficient functioning of the market and has put in place a set of well-defined, publicly available surveillance measures (including the ASM framework) to address excessive volatility in specific stocks. This mechanism gets automatically triggered under certain conditions of price volatility in any stock."

Adani Group stocks have taken a beating on the bourses after the US-based activist short-seller Hindenburg Research made a litany of allegations, including fraudulent transactions and share price manipulation at the Gautam Adani-led Group. The Adani Group has dismissed the charges as lies, saying it complies with all laws and disclosure requirements.

The regulator further said, "In all specific entity related matters, if any information comes to SEBI's notice, then, as per extant policies, the same is examined and after due examination, appropriate action is taken. SEBI has consistently followed this approach on entity level issues and would continue to do so in future as well." SEBI said, "The Indian financial market as represented by Sensex and Nifty has demonstrated ongoing stability and is continuing to function in a transparent, fair and efficient manner."