At a FICCI event, corporate law expert Cyril Shroff told SEBI that the quality of boardroom conversations at promoter-led Indian companies remains poor. Experts urged SEBI to strengthen corporate governance norms and simultaneously called for new financial products to help monetise India's vast household gold holdings. The twin agenda — reforming listed-company boards and deepening capital market instruments linked to gold — reflects ongoing regulatory pressure on SEBI to address structural gaps in market governance.

The concern about promoter-led boards goes to the heart of India's corporate governance architecture under SEBI's Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements (LODR) Regulations, 2015. These regulations mandate that at least one-third of a listed company's board comprises independent directors (one-half where the chairperson is executive or a promoter). The underlying tension is structural: in promoter-dominated companies, independent directors are often nominated with promoter consent, making genuine independence difficult to enforce in practice.

SEBI has progressively tightened norms — capping the tenure of independent directors at two consecutive terms of five years each, requiring shareholder approval via special resolution for continuation beyond the first term, and mandating that at least one woman independent director sit on the board. Related-party transaction (RPT) thresholds were revised in 2021-22 to require shareholder approval for RPTs exceeding ₹1,000 crore or 10% of annual consolidated turnover, whichever is lower.

On gold monetisation, India holds an estimated 25,000+ tonnes of household gold — the world's largest private stock. Converting this idle asset into tradeable financial products (sovereign gold bonds, gold ETFs, gold deposit schemes) is a capital-market deepening priority. SEBI's jurisdiction extends to gold ETFs and related exchange-traded instruments. The dual agenda raised at the FICCI event — governance reform and gold monetisation — signals where SEBI's regulatory bandwidth will be directed in the near term.