MUMBAI, December 17: All stock exchanges will henceforth have to impose a uniform intra-day price band of 10 per cent on all securities. This will be in addition to the 25 per cent weekly price cap currently being followed by all exchanges. This was decided at the annual meeting the market regulator SEBI had with heads of all stock exchanges here on Wednesday.Speaking to the newsmen after the meeting, SEBI chairman D R Mehta said the uniform price band was enforced because there have been a number of instances where due to the variation of limits in different exchanges, the prices of securities varied widely especially on the NSE and the BSE.The most recent case was the ITC scrip where wide variation took place because NSE had a 7 per cent band while BSE had a 10 per cent band. In fact, this move will require NSE to change its price band as the exchange has three types of price bands - 5 per cent, 7 per cent and 10 per cent for different scrips.Among other important decisions taken was the introduction of the `stop loss' facility on all exchanges having on-line trading system. This is expected to help investors limit their losses by specifying to their brokers a price fluctuation level beyond which the broker must activate a reverse order position.This `stop loss' specification can be made at the time of order entry itself. The system is already in vogue on the NSE. An upper limit for the gross exposure of brokers has also been decided at 20 times the base minimum and additional capital. Exchanges are free to fix the exposure at lower levels.This will be in addition to the present capital adequacy norm which allows a daily net exposure of 33.3 times the base capital, and the other margin requirements. It was also decided to introduce a T+5 (rolling settlement) with daily netting for the demat segment from January 15, 1998.This will coincide with the date from which all institutional trades will have to compulsorily be settled in the demat segment. The NSE, which is the only exchange to have a demat segment, has a facility for both rolling settlements and weekly netting. This will have to be changed to retain only rolling settlements.Exchange chiefs told SEBI that the good-bad delivery norms are not being effectively implemented because of non-cooperation from companies and registrars. SEBI has asked them to submit the names of the top five companies and registrars against whom there is a large number of complaints, so that it can take action.The exchanges have also suggested that the top 100 companies in the BSE specified group of securities and NSE Nifty should appoint compliance officers to help the exchanges to verify any market rumours on the companies since there have been instances where these rumours have affected the trading.In case of multiple memberships, SEBI has said that to the extent possible, joint inspections of these members should be done by members of the related exchanges.
