Even the markets watchdog Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) could not escape the unfavourable market conditions in the year gone by. As the activities of fund raising through primary market, mergers and acquisitions, new fund offerings of mutual funds got deferred due to the impact of global slowdown on the financial sector, SEBI's total income for the financial year 2008-09 slipped by 56 per cent from Rs 490 crore in 2007-08 to Rs 315 crore.
Documents in possession of Hindustan Times showed that the sudden drop in the IPO activity during 2008-09 saw SEBI's revenue from the primary market drop by 94 per cent from Rs 75 crore in 2007-08 to Rs 4.2 crore in 2008-09. Incidentally, the head 'Fee for filing of offer documents-PMD' accounted for the maximum income of all the fee-based income heads in the year 2007-08.
Sebi derives its largest income through its investments. Income from investments accounted for 37 per cent of its total income in the fiscal 2009. This head saw a jump of 15 per cent. "The income from investment has increased with the rise in interest rate and increase in corpus size," said a senior official at Sebi. The regulator's move to rationalise the fee structure will reduce the income of the regulator even further.
source: Hindustan Times