However, the BOOE has already got two new public nominees on its board. These are former Bank of Baroda chairman AC Shah and former chief analyst of Morgan Stanley Pravin Shah, whose names were cleared by the FMC last week.In its meeting last week with BOOE representatives, the FMC was said to have accepted BOOE's proposal to induct six public nominees - instead of the 12 demanded by the futures markets regulator. Accordingly, the public nominees on BOOE's board will be increased gradually and not at one go as was being discussed earlier.

Currently, the BOOE has three public nominees, including FMC director DS Kolamkar, Bombay University professor (agricultural economics) Shashikala D Savant and Maharashtra State Cooperative Marketing Federation managing director Navinchandra S Jain.

Once cleared by the FMC, it will be for the first time that the president of a different exchange will sit on BOOE's board as one of its public nominee director. Rathi's presence is aimed at bringing BOOE and the BSE closer, as well as help BOOE lure BSE's speculators to give the much-required leg up to the sluggish volumes on the BOOE.

Rathi's name may be decorative, but his presence will surely help the BOOE penetrate the BSE better then ever before, which in turn will contribute in increasing both membership and volumes on the exchange. In order to help the willing stock brokers and speculators take up the speculative activities in the commodity futures market, the BOOE will conduct periodic training sessions on the BSE's premises. The training will include research-based technical analysis and commodity price driving factors. Lastly, the BOOE plans to kick off membership drive on the BSE also, after it gets the FMC clearance of the byelaws submitted last week.y