Companies shall be required to appoint agencies to monitor the utilisation of funds raised through public and rights issues, and report any deviation in utilisation to the stock exchanges, the Securities and Exchange Board of India announced on Thursday. They will also have to make public the adverse comments of their audit committee (or of the monitoring agency they have appointed) through advertisements in the newspapers.
SEBI’s amendments to the equity listing agreement for companies list out a system for monitoring of issue proceeds.
Every company making a public or rights issue of more than Rs 500 crore, has to appoint a monitoring agency which will file its report to the issuer company which will in turn place the report before its audit committee.
ELECTRONIC FILING
SEBI also made mandatory the electronic filing of corporate information through a new portal _ Corporate Filing and Dissemination System (CFDS) _ for 100 companies starting January 1.
The earlier platform, the Electronic Data Information Filing and Retrieval will be phased out gradually, said SEBI in an announcement on its Web site.
The CFDS provides a common platform for listed companies to file their returns with stock exchanges as well as a common place for investors to view information related to these companies (on www.corpfiling. co.in).
