The Securities and Exchange Board of India is expected to resolve the messy ONGC allotments tangle next week, though it is in no hurry to pin the responsibility on anyone.
According to Sebi sources, there are still close to 30,000 investors who have yet to receive their allotments in the public offering of ONGC.
The public offer of ONGC, which raised close to Rs 10,000 crore (Rs 100 billion) from the market - the largest ever - ran into allotment troubles when high net-worth individuals were found to have received 100 per cent allotments, due to an error in crediting the accounts by the registrars.
The moment the error was discovered, the exercise of reversing the credits was undertaken but it took an inordinately long time.
Sebi, after conducting a preliminary enquiry into the episode has concluded said that the entire mess-up occurred due to lack of manpower at the registrars end. The registrars to the issue was MCS Ltd.
However, there is no immediate move by Sebi to mete out any punishment to the registrars. Sebi officials said that there did not appear to be any mala fide intention on the part of MCS to crediting the accounts wrongly, though enquiries are still on, sources said.
The securities watchdog is planning to clean-up the process of allotments in public issues by introducing a more systematic approach to it. Sources said that the allotments had to be done in conjunction with the merchant bankers who lead manage the issue.
Once the allotments are decided, merchant bankers do not have anything to do with the crediting of the shares. The job is handled by the registrar.
