High Court Extends Stay On Launch Of Nifty-Based Products By SGX
SGX will have to wait further to find out if they can launch their Nifty-based derivatives as planned on June 4.
The Bombay High Court today extended its interim stay on the launch of new Nifty-based derivative contracts by the Singapore Exchange Ltd. till May 31.
A vacation bench of Justice S J Kathawalla deferred the hearing on the dispute between the National Stock Exchange Ltd. and SGX after the two parties sought time to make up their minds on the terms for sending the dispute for arbitration.
Earlier this week, Justice Kathawalla had passed an interim order restraining SGX from acting upon its circular issued on April 11 announcing the launch of the derivative products. The bench, at that time, had also suggested that the parties take the dispute before a court-appointed arbitrator.
While the NSE consented to the above, the matter could not be sent for arbitration as the SGX’s lawyers sought time to take instructions on the terms of the stay till the dispute was heard and disposed of by the arbitrator.
The NSE had approached the high court on Tuesday through senior lawyer Abhishek Manu Singhvi, seeking an injunction against SGX. India’s largest stock exchange is seeking to restrain SGX from launching their new products on June 4, citing intellectual property rights over the Nifty benchmark.
In February, the three Indian stock exchanges -- the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), the NSE and the Metropolitan Stock Exchange -- had taken a joint decision to stop trading of derivative contracts based on Indian indices on overseas bourses. However, on April 11, the SGX announced new India equity derivative products that will be based on settlement prices of Nifty Futures contracts.
Derivatives are contracts between two or more parties whose value or prices are determined by the fluctuations of underlying financial assets such as securities, bonds, currencies, stocks or market indexes.