SEBI chief seeks to allay investor fears

"Capital market watchdog SEBI today sought to allay investor fears on Government agencies allegedlly investigating investments in stock markets saying most of the reports on the issue were baseless and there was no failure in the systems to warrant any panic.

'I think what has happened is that a number of baseless reports have come out. It talked about people (Joint Secretary in charge of capital markets in Finance Ministry) flying into Mumbai when they had come only for routine work in connection with board meetings elsewhere and not in SEBI,' Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) chairman M Damadoran told a private news channel in New York.

'All I want to tell investors is that there is no need to panic. Most the reports if not all is completely baseless,' he said. Damadoran said SEBI and other agencies looking into the relentless rise in stock markets for two weeks (before the fall on Wednesday and Thrusday on reports of scrutiny by agencies like IB) was nothing unusual.

'Everytime there is an unusual movement in the market, in fact the time when the unusual movement takes place, we look at the trade that are done during that time and then we look at who did these trades,' he said.

'There is nothing new that is happening from our side that hasn't happened earlier. And that's why I believe that all these reports showhow seems to be baseless,' he said.

Damamodran said there was no systemic problem and 'I think our systems have measured up very well.'

'There is no reason for anybody to imagine that the systems will fail, it will not. At some levels of the market some people will enter, some people will exit. Our message to investors, especially the smaller one has been that you must take informed decisions,' he added. "