Next Sebi board meet to discuss new corporate governance norms

Sebi will take up the Kotak panel's report on corporate governance in its next board meeting and the regulator has held preliminary discussions with corporate affairs as well as finance ministries on the proposed norms, Chairman Ajay Tyagi said today.

The high-level Sebi committee, headed by eminent banker Uday Kotak, had suggested a major overhaul of corporate governance norms for listed companies in its report submitted on October 5.

The Securities and Exchange Board (Sebi) has sought public comments till November 4 on the 177-page report.

Sebi chief said the board at its next meeting would take up for discussion and approval the recommendations of the Uday Kotak Committee report on corporate governance.

"We have received corporate governance committee report and we have received public comments too, we will try that in the next board meeting we will discuss about this. We have preliminary discussion with corporate affairs as well as finance ministry," Tyagi told reporters here.

Among others, the Kotak report called for limiting the chairmanship to only non-executive directors and appointing at least one woman independent director.

While the proposal for only non-executive director allowed to be made chairman would eventually lead to a split in the posts of chairman and managing director, the committee also suggested increasing the minimum board strength to six and the number of board meetings to five in a year.