IPO form to get shorter and simpler

Market regulator SEBI on Thursday decidedto introduce a new short and simple form for IPO investors for increasingretail participation in the stock markets.

"The present IPO form is not investor friendly. Ittakes a lot of time to understand it. Taking all this into account, the wholeform has been changed and this will lead to reduction in the size of the formby about one-fourth," Sebi chairman U K Sinha said.

Talking to reporters after the Sebi board meeting, he saidthe aim is to make the form simple and understandable for ordinary retailinvestor.

The Board also decided that the form would also carryinformation regarding the peer companies' Price-Earnings (PE) ratio and trackrecord of lead managers of the IPO.

The application forms currently being used for bidding ininitial public offers (IPOs) and follow-on public offers (FPOs) are long andrequire the investors to fill in some details that can be done away with.

Besides, these forms run into 15-20 pages in most cases,although there are only 2-3 pages where particulars need to be filled in by theinvestors.

The rest of the pages contain instructions, informationabout the company and the issue and details about bankers, registrars andbidding centres.

The Sebi Board also decided on a uniform KYC (know-your-customer) norms for different market players and accept 'Aadhar' or Unique Identitycard as one of the document as identity proof for bidding in IPO and FPO.