Speaking at a seminar on `millenial challenges for India's capital market' organised by Indian Chamber of Commerce, the managing director of NSDL, C B Bhave, said that in future, rolling settlements would be the order of the day.

He said that with this, arbitrage opportunities in share prices between stock exchanges would disappear, and new areas for arbitraging would be opened up by the introduction of derivatives trading. At present, he said that nearly 500 corporates, representing 85 per cent of market capitalisation, had joined NSDL. The deputy managing director of National Stock Exchange, (NSE) Ravi Narain, said that derivatives trading would open up new opportunities and provide more flexibility in hedging than the present badla system.

Former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), G V Ramakrishna, saidthat the country's capital market would improve if a uniform rolling settlement was introduced throughout. Advocating discontinuance of the badla system, he said derivatives was a better option and would take care of speculation.

On the role of FIIs, he said they were not stable players in the country's capital market and added that the interest of FIIs in capital markets largely depended upon the fluctuations of interest rates worldwide and the funds committed could very well move from equities to debt instruments if these ruled higher outside the country. In this context, he said that it was the Indian institutional investors only who could bring back good tidings into the capital market.