NEW DELHI, Dec 16: The Securities & Exchange Board of India's (SEBI) Inter-stock Exchange Coordination group, which is meeting on Wednesday, is likely to recommend that the order placed by small investors should be given preference over those made by institutional players. According to industry sources, the coordination group is also expected to recommend introducing overall exposure limits for brokers. At present, this exposure limit for brokers is on an intra-day turnover basis.

Members of the broking community in the Capital were, however, not receptive to the idea of giving preference to small investors over institutional investors. They also felt that the brokers should be allowed to trade as much as possible but their exposure should be limited to a multiple of their base capital. Sources said the group might discuss the need for creation of a common database of all the stock brokers having multiple membership. The idea, said sources, was to share information regarding the member brokers, particularly those who got penalised or were suspended from one stock exchange with all the stock exchanges.

The co-ordination group, which has representatives from almost all the major stock exchanges including those from Bombay, Delhi, Calcutta, Madras and Ahmedabad, besides the market regulator, held its last meeting over six months ago.

The meeting on Wednesday would also discuss the issue of introducing uniform settlement for the exchanges offering the modified carry forward system as also measures to increase the dematerialised segment from the physical segment.

Common holidays for the exchanges and methods for increasing the delivery business are also going to be discussed during the meeting.Sources said the market regulator had been deliberating over the introduction of uniform settlement to counter the speculation in the country's premier stock exchanges.

The regulator had also been clamoring for the need of creating an exhaustive database of issuers, trading history and company history of scrips trading on the exchanges and disseminating this information to all the stock exchanges, sources added.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.