(Bloomberg) -- The Securities and Exchange Board of India found no evidence of collusion between the National Stock Exchange of India Ltd. and OPG Securities Pvt. in a case of unfair market access dating back nearly a decade, according to an order published on the market regulator’s website.
SEBI has disposed all proceedings against NSE and its former executives including Chief Executive Officer Chitra Ramkrishna and Group Operating Officer Anand Subramanian. In December, the Securities Appellate Tribunal had quashed a fine against NSE and its former employees citing insufficient evidence of violating unfair trading practices rules.
The case “fails to produce enough justification for establishment of collusion or connivance” between OPG, NSE and its then employees, Kamlesh C. Varshney, a SEBI member, said in his order.
The so-called co-location facility scam had rocked India’s securities market in the mid-2010s after some high-frequency traders were allegedly granted unfair access to NSE’s systems, allowing them to have an advantage over the rest of the market. The scandal helped shed light on how secretive high-frequency and algorithmic trading firms operate amid a race for speed that cut trading time to microseconds.
Read: High-Speed Trading Backlash Mounts Pressure on India’s Sebi
The order clears a key hurdle for the world’s largest derivative exchange by contracts to list publicly. In 2019, the regulator had imposed a six-month ban on NSE from accessing the capital market, effectively delaying plans for an initial public offering. The exchange had first filed draft public offering papers in 2016.
“Disposal of this order is positive for NSE IPO, which has been long delayed due to various matters,” Deven Choksey, managing director at DRChoksey FinServ Pvt., said. “I expect them to refile for IPO soon.”
--With assistance from Ashutosh Joshi.
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