‘To promote orderly and healthy growth of securities market and protection of investors Securities and Exchange Board of India was set up.’ With reference to this statement explain the objectives of Securities and Exchange Board of India.

The SEBI was set up to achieve the following objectives:

(i) Regulation of Stock Exchanges: The first objective of SEBI is to regulate stock exchanges so that efficient services may be provided to all the parties operating there.

(ii) Protection to the Investors: The capital market is meaningless in the absence of the investors. Therefore, it is important to protect the interests of the investors. The protection of the interests of the investors means protecting them from the wrong information given by the companies in their prospectus, reducing the risk of delivery and payment, etc. Hence, the foremost objective of the SEBI is to provide security to the investors.

(iii) Checking the Insider Trading: Insider trading means the buying and selling of securities by those persons (Directors, Promoters, etc.) who have some secret information about the company and who wish to take advantage of this secret information. This hurts the interests of the general investors. It was very essential to check this tendency. Many steps have been taken to check inside trading through the medium of the SEBI.

(iv) Control over Brokers: It is important to keep an eye on the activities of the brokers and other middlemen in order to control the capital market. To have a control over them, it was necessary to establish the SEBI.