Securities and Exchange Board of India
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is a board (autonomous body) created by the Government of India in 1988 and given statutory form in 1992 with the SEBI Act 1992 with its head office at Mumbai. It is chaired by M. Damodaran, a civil servant credited with turning around large public sector companies, including the famous Unit Trust of India, from near-death scenarios.
The Board is comprised of whole time members and outside members (representing the finance ministry, RBI and experts). The present members are Mr. G Anantharaman, Dr. TC Nair and Mr. VK Chopra. Below the Board, headed by the Chairman, the staff/officers of the organization are led by Executive Directors. The present EDs are Mr. RK Nair, Ms. Usha Narayanan and Mr. Sandeep P Parekh. Also Mr. MS Ray is an Officer on Special Duty (equivalent to an ED).
Sebi has three functions: quasi-legislative, quasi-judicial and quasi-executive. It drafts rules in its legislative capacity, it conducts enquiries and enforcement action in its executive function and it passes rulings and orders in its judicial capacity. Though this makes it very powerful, there is an appeals process to create accountibility. There is a Securities Appeallate Tribunal which is a three member tribunal and is presently headed by a former high court judge - Mr. Justice NK Sodhi. A second appeal lies directly to the Supreme Court directly (where important questions of law arise).
Sebi has had mixed success as a regulator. Though it has pushed systemic reforms aggressively and successively (e.g. the quick movement towards making the markets electronic and paperless), it lacked the legal expertise, till recently, needed to sustain prosecutions/enforcement actions.