Rama Krishna Vadlamudi,
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The world has seen many a financial crisis in more than one
hundred years—right from the Great Depression of the 1930s to the Lehman
Brothers collapse in 2008. Despite such financial disasters, no stock or
commodity exchange has gone bust so far—to the best of my knowledge.
Now, India is about to create history—in the form of a
commodity exchange going bankrupt, making hundreds of investors (most of them
could be short-term greedy traders or punters) gasping for breadth.
Yes, you heard it right. The National Spot Exchange Limited
(it is in no way related to the NSE or National Stock Exchange Limited, Mumbai). According
to media reports, the National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL) may not be in a
position to pay off its dues, to the tune of about Rs 5,500 crore to investors.
At the start of this month, NSEL had suggested phased payment to end the crisis.
But there is no clarity on this from the NSEL.
As an exchange, NSEL is the central counterparty to all
transactions done on that exchange—which means NSEL receives payments from all
the parties and guarantees payments to all the counterparties, thereby
completing the payment and settlement process. If newspaper reports are to be
believed, NSEL may not be having sufficient assets (in the form of contracted
commodities kept in the warehouses or other assets) to fulfill its obligations
to the investors. NSEL is promoted by Financial Technologies Ltd, which is the
promoter to MCX Ltd also. The brain behind them is Jignesh Shah.
The real problem is that the National Spot Exchange is
lightly regulated. So, the light regulation has been exploited by stakeholders,
market-men and some investors.
It’s not clear whether the NSEL fiasco will spread to other
entities, leading to a systematic crisis in the financial markets.
If the National Spot Exchange goes under water, it will be a
world record—earning India
the dubious distinction of a commodity exchange going bankrupt, a world’s first!
Till now, we have assumed commodity or stock exchanges would
not go belly up. I think we need to revise our assumptions of such
infallibility.
The National Spot Exchange, as expected, has defaulted on its payments on 20August2013.
ReplyDeleteThe National Spot Exchange has again defaulted on its second payment of the agreed payout on 27Aug2013.
ReplyDeleteSGS, the Swiss audit firm, hired by NSEL under the Govt instructions to audit stocks in warehouses, has found that the exchange has overstated the availability of stocks by 85%.
ReplyDeleteOn 10Sep2013, it was announced that FMC or Forward Markets Commission, the commodities market regulator would be under the administrative control of the Finance Ministry, instead of Consumer Affairs Ministry. With this all the financial sector regulators, RBI, SEBI, IRDA, PFRDA and FMC are brought under the Finance Ministry.
ReplyDelete