The Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”) has recently rolled out a draft circular inviting comments on the “Audiovisual (AV) representation of disclosures made in the Public Issue Offer Documents” by April 9, 2024.
To create awareness among investors to not rely on unauthorized/unsolicited information about the public issues, SEBI has decided that the disclosures made in the Draft Red Herring Prospectus (“DRHP”) and Red Herring Prospects (“RHP”) of public issues must be made available in Audio Visual (“AV”) format for ease in understanding of the salient features of public issues.
Additionally, the AV must be prepared and placed in public domain by Lead Manager to the public issue on main board which must initially be in bilingual version i.e. English and Hindi. The Hindi version shall contain the text in Devanagari script.
The contents in AV must follow the provided guidelines:
1. It must comply with the advertisement code prescribed by SEBI under Schedule IX of SEBI (Issue of Capital and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2018.
2. It must start with the following disclaimer to investors –
“Investors are advised not to rely on any other document, content or information provided on the offer on the internet/online websites/social media platforms/micro-blogging platforms and by the finfluencers since the same is not approved/ commissioned/ paid by the company or its promoter(s)/directors/KMPs in any manner”
3. The duration of each bilingual version of the AV must be a maximum of 8 minutes.
4. The total duration of the AV must be equitably distributed among the material disclosures made under various sections of the public issue offer document viz. risk factors, capital structure, objects of the offer, business of the issuer, financial information, litigations and material developments etc.
5. The content of the AV must be factual, non-repetitive and non-promotional in nature.
6. The AV must be revised with updated information at the stage of Red Herring Prospectus (RHP).
The Issuer/ Lead manager must publish the AV within 5 working days both at the stage of submission and resubmission of DRHP. It must be made available in digital/ social media platforms of the Issuer and Association of Investment Bankers of India (“AIBI”).The web link of the said AV must be made available on the websites of Stock Exchanges and the concerned Lead Managers and must also be accessible from the QR code pertaining to the public issue. Lead Manager(s) to the public issue must be jointly responsible for the content and information made available in the AV.
The comments/ suggestions must be submitted latest by April 9, 2024, through the following link:
https://www.sebi.gov.in/sebiweb/publiccommentv2/PublicCommentAction.do?doPublicComments=yes
Please refer to the hyperlink for a detailed read of the Circular and the method of submitting comments.
Source: Securities and Exchange Board of India
