NE BUSINESS BUREAU
GANDHINAGAR, Sept 8
The StockHolding Corporation of India on Tuesday announced that it has received an approval from GIFT SEZ Authority to start its custody operations in India’s first International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) at GIFT City in Gandhinagar.
StockHolding is India’s largest & premier Custodian & has assets under Custody to the tune of $540 Billion USD with over a 22% market share. For more than 3 decades since inception StockHolding has been the trusted Custodian for Institutional & Corporate clients in the domestic onshore market in India. Since 2014, Stock Holding has also started providing services to Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPI) investing in India’s domestic markets, the release added.
Welcoming StockHolding Corporation to GIFT IFSC, Tapan Ray, MD & Group CEO, GIFT City said, “Stock Holding’s custody operations would play a pivotal role to serve foreign portfolio investors in GIFT IFSC. We foresee huge interest coming from foreign investors participating in GIFT IFSC. We are closely working with regulatory authorities to allow investment products such as ETFs, REITs, GDRs, etc at IFSC Exchanges where the role of a custodian would be critical.”
Ramesh NGS, MD & CEO of StockHolding said, “Going forward, through its IFSC GIFT branch, Stock Holding plans to extend its full range of Custodial services to a wider audience of international investors (FPIs, EFIs FDI), other classes of investors and capital market intermediaries as permitted by the unified regulator IFSC Authority in IFSC GIFT City. This would open a new line of business for Stock Holding strengthening its topline and bottom-line and we are committed to building this business over the long term. The IFSC GIFT is gaining increasing prominence with the IFSC Authority expanding the range of permissible products and announcing investor-friendly and tax-efficient policies.”
Stock Holding has already set up a wholly-owned subsidiary, Stock Holding Securities IFSC Limited (SSIL) operating in the IFSC providing trading and settlement services to Brokers/ Trading members as are permitted by the SEBI IFSC guidelines.
Further, Stock Holding also proposes to set up a document management company in IFSC GIFT to cater to the requirements of all such entities set up in IFSC GIFT. Stock Holding Document Management Services, a 100% subsidiary of Stock Holding has been providing services to leading institutions, Government departments, and agencies, and also to private-sector corporations for the last several years in India’s domestic market.