The International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) has issued a Consultation Paper to seek comments / views from public on the draft master circular for Stock Exchanges and Clearing Corporations in IFSC.
The Master Circular shall supersede all the circulars and guidelines of SEBI and IFSCA with respect to Stock Exchanges and Clearing Corporations.
Key Highlights:
- Circuit Breakers and Price Bands: Stock Exchanges shall have the operational flexibility to set their own guidelines with respect to circuit breakers and price bands.
- Market Integrity: The Stock Exchange shall have systems and defined procedures in place to monitor collusion between Broker-Dealers indulging in trades solely for seeking incentives and prevent payment of incentives in such cases.
- Disclosure of Proprietary trading by Broker-Dealer to Client: Every Broker-Dealer shall disclose to his client whether he does client based business or proprietary trading as well.
- Penalty Structure: The Stock Exchanges shall levy a penalty from brokers and the same shall be credited to the Investor Protection Fund; The penalty shall be in accordance to the strucutre proposed vide the circular.
- Penalty Waiver: Stock Exchanges may waive penalty for a client code modification where Broker-Dealer can produce evidence to the satisfaction of the Stock Exchange that the modification was on account of a genuine error.
- Co-location / Proximity Hosting: Facility shall be offered by the Stock Exchanges to eligible market participants whereby their trading or data-vending systems are allowed to be located within or at close proximity to the premises of the Stock Exchanges and are allowed to connect to the trading platform of the Stock Exchanges through direct and private network.
- Trading Hours: The trading hours for all product shall be as decided by the Stock Exchanges based on cost-benefit analysis but shall not exceed 23 hours and 30 minutes in a day.
- Approval of Software: Broker-Dealers / trading members shall seek approval of the respective Stock Exchanges for deployment of the software by submitting necessary details as required. The Stock Exchanges shall grant approval or reject the application of the as the case may be.
Public Comments are invited until October 22, 2025 The link to the Consultation Paper is available here: https://lnkd.in/gRhTMJR5
Readers are welcome to share their views on info@regstreetlaw.com
