Asia’s oldest inventory alternate was making ready to have a good time its one hundred and fiftieth anniversary when a storm of dangerous information upended the festivities.
On Monday, a report revealed deepening losses in fairness derivatives amongst India’s retail merchants, fueling considerations that the Securities and Change Board of India might impose tighter curbs. Simply days earlier, the regulator barred Jane Road Group from dealing in native markets, alleging the buying and selling large manipulated costs to make billions of {dollars} on the expense of small buyers — fees the US agency has denied.
Buoyed by a increase in derivatives buying and selling, BSE noticed its income surge lately, even because the regulator started curbing the choices frenzy late final yr. Now, with mounting fears of even stricter oversight and bigger rival Nationwide Inventory Change of India Ltd. making ready for a public itemizing, BSE faces questions over whether or not the buying and selling panorama that powered its rise is about to shift.
“That is the time for BSE to innovate and adapt,” stated Deven Choksey, managing director at wealth administration agency DRChoksey FinServ Pvt. “The alternate that may provide you with differentiated merchandise that remedy the difficulty of people dropping out to high-frequency merchants will be capable to nook volumes going forward.”
The Jane Road fallout has already taken a toll on BSE, with the shares on July 4 struggling one among their steepest declines this yr — extending a slide that had already begun. The inventory, whose value ballooned greater than 900 per cent over the previous two years, is now down 21 per cent from its June peak. On Friday, it closed at its lowest value in virtually two months.
Based on Jefferies Monetary Group Inc., decreased volatility and the curbs on Jane Road led to a 25 per cent week-on-week drop in index choices premium turnover throughout each BSE and NSE on Thursday, the primary main derivatives expiration day because the ban. That, the brokerage estimates, might shave 4 per cent off BSE’s earnings per share within the present fiscal yr.
“Straightforward positive factors could also be behind BSE,” stated Sonam Srivastava, founding father of Wright Analysis in Mumbai. Present valuations mirror hopes of structural change, and BSE might want to ship on them, she added.
Based in 1875 by cotton service provider Premchand Roychand, BSE started because the Native Share & Inventory Brokers’ Affiliation, the place brokers met below a banyan tree close to Mumbai’s City Corridor earlier than it moved to its present location on Dalal Road — the equal of Wall Road. Over the a long time, BSE launched key improvements, together with the benchmark BSE Sensex Index in 1986. It now hosts greater than 5,000 listed companies.
BSE’s journey hasn’t been with out setbacks. A billion-dollar scandal shook India in 1992, when Mumbai dealer Harshad Mehta illegally diverted financial institution funds into the inventory market — an episode that prompted reforms and reshaped the nation’s funding panorama. SEBI was granted statutory powers, and the absolutely digital NSE launched in 1994, shortly rising as a formidable participant and forcing its rival to adapt. BSE moved to digital buying and selling the next yr.
Extra lately, as tens of millions of latest buyers embraced shares and derivatives, BSE ramped up spending in infrastructure to enhance its buying and selling platform and transparency, Chief Government Officer Sundararaman Ramamurthy stated by electronic mail. Whereas the alternate’s share of India’s each day $14 billion money equities buying and selling — an space lengthy dominated by the NSE — has stagnated at about 6 per cent, the launch of derivatives tied to the Sensex and BSE Bankex Index has helped, he stated.
BSE’s internet revenue surged greater than fourfold to 4.94 billion rupees ($58 million) within the quarter resulted in March, with derivatives accounting for greater than half of it.
“Our efforts have paid off,” stated Ramamurthy, who took over in 2023. “Sensex index derivatives are actually the world’s fastest-growing derivatives contract.”
For Dubai-based Siddharth Balachandran, current regulatory measures geared toward defending retail buyers supply extra reassurance than concern. A shareholder since BSE was privately traded over a decade in the past, Balachandran held a 3 per cent stake as of March 31, making him the biggest shareholder after Life Insurance coverage Corp. of India Ltd., the nation’s high insurer.
SEBI’s strikes “solely enhance the muse of credibility and relative security that I base my choices on,” he stated.
Balachandran, who additionally owns NSE shares and plans to maintain them for the lengthy haul, stated his investments are rooted within the perception that the shift in family financial savings to monetary merchandise will speed up, offering a tailwind for exchanges.
BSE, he stated, is a proxy for India’s progress story.
“My technique is to align with establishments that may stand the take a look at of time,” Balachandran stated. “BSE was the apparent alternative.”
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Printed on July 12, 2025
