Sebi to review books of sensex, nifty companies

Stung by the Satyam affair, market regulator Sebi on Friday announced that the financial statements of all the companies included in the sensex and nifty will be reviewed by another auditor after they are audited by their respective statutory auditors. "Such a review would be in relation to the last quarterly results and last audited annual financial results,'' a Sebi statement said. Some listed companies which are not included in nifty and sensex and selected on a random basis will also come under this scrutiny, the regulator said.
    Sebi will have a panel of auditors to take up this exercise. The first of such exercise will be taken up after the publication of October-December quarterly results and is likely to be completed by end-February.
    The decisions were proposed in a meeting of the Sebi Committee on Disclosures and Accounting (SCODA) and the regulator had accepted the recommendations of the committee.
    Sebi's decision on peer review comes close on the heels of Satyam's chairman Ramalinga Raju disclosing financial frauds amounting to over Rs 7,000 crore, spanning several years.
    BSE's sensex includes 30 blue chip stocks while NSE's nifty has 50 blue chips, with a large number of stocks included in both the indices. The list includes heavyweights from the public and the private sectors like Reliance Industries, some ADAG and Tata group companies, Infosys, ONGC, NTPC, Bharti Airtel, SBI and HUL.
    Till Friday, Satyam too was included in both the leading indices but the bourses have removed it from these two and all other indices, effective Monday. On Friday, BSE and NSE also announced that they would remove the stock from being traded in the derivatives segments as well, effective January 30.
    On its part, Sebi has already ordered a probe into the market dealings of Satyam and a team of officials from the regulator is already in Hyderabad looking into Satyam's books.