With the Capital Market growing at a very fast pace as a reflection of Indian Economy adopting global patterns, many companies entered the stock market to reap the benefit with fraudulent interests. After raising a lot of money from the public and small investors at large, they vanished from the scene. The root of this menace can be traced to 1992 when in the name of liberalization the govt. abolished the office of the Controller of Capital Issues (CCI) and asked SEBI to monitor the capital market. Many promoters took advantage of the prevailing situation, which allowed them to raise money from the public at fancy premiums with the role of SEBI reduced to merely vetting of IPO’s prospectus. Vanishing companies as identified by SEBI – are companies that have not complied with listing / filing requirement of Stock Exchanges / ROC for 2 years and the companies in respect of whom no office found at the address mentioned as the Regd. Office. The matter has been very actively taken up by Shri Kirit Somaiya and resulted in action against many such companies and their promoters by regulatory authorities..

Efforts by such investor friendly and market vigilant, CA turned Politician has always kept the various market regulators at their toes.

SEBI’s functioning as an effective watchdog has been greatly hampered by the lack of adequate powers.

The matter of extending more powers to SEBI has also been taken up by Shri Kirit Somaiya.

The govt has been constantly granting more and more powers to SEBI which is very much evident from the number of rules & regulations coming up day after day regulating the capital markets.