India

SEBI investigates State Bank of India over breach of corporate compliance

The State Bank of India (SBI) has been questioned by the regulator on its failure to comply with new corporate governments regulations, alongside an alleged further dozen state-owned entities.

SBI has been questioned by the regulator on its failure to comply with new corporate governments regulations, alongside an alleged further dozen state-owned entities.

The Economic Times has reported that SBI and SEBI have butted heads due to disagreements over the new government rules, namely over the number of independent figures required by SBI to be present on their board of directors.

As SBI is a top 500 listed company with a regular executive chairperson, half of the members of its board of directors must be independent directors, as described by the regulations implemented on April 1st. SBI, therefore, requires 7 independent directors on it’s board, yet SEBI only considers the current SBI board to contain 5. This is due to the fact that multiple directors are both government and banking-regulator nominated.Similar conflicts have arisen between the firm and the regulator over SBI’s audit committee.