# The Information That Changes the Rules

> Overview of SEBI regulations\, unpublished price sensitive information\, and general availability rules\.

## 1. The information that changes the rules

The SEBI (Prohibition of Insider Trading) Regulations, 2015 restrict trading while holding important unpublished information and improperly passing that information around. SEBI is the Securities and Exchange Board of India. The regulations were published on 15 January 2015 and took effect on the 120th day after publication. The supplied version includes later amendments.

The central term is **unpublished price sensitive information**, or **UPSI**. For company securities, this means information connected directly or indirectly with a company or its securities that is not generally available and would probably materially affect the price once public. “Material” means significant enough to matter.

Information is generally available when the public can access it without discrimination. Publication on a stock-exchange website normally qualifies. An unverified newspaper story, online report or rumour does not automatically qualify. This express exclusion took effect on 18 May 2024.

UPSI can include:

- Financial results, dividends, capital changes and proposed fundraising.
- Mergers, demergers, acquisitions, delisting, business disposals, expansion, and contract awards or terminations outside ordinary business.
- Key management changes, except retirement or completion of a term; statutory or secretarial auditor resignations; and rating changes other than environmental, social and governance ratings.
- Management or control agreements; specified frauds, defaults and arrests in India or abroad; and loan restructuring or settlements.
- Admitted winding-up or insolvency proceedings, decisions on resolution plans, and the start or final reports of forensic audits investigating suspected financial wrongdoing.
- Regulatory or judicial actions, litigation outcomes, unusual guarantees or similar commitments for third parties, and changes to key licences or approvals.

The expanded examples took effect on 10 June 2025. The list is illustrative: other information can also be UPSI. Relevant SEBI listing-rule materiality standards apply to identifying specified events.

The company rules cover listed securities and securities proposed to be listed. This includes certain unlisted companies that have filed listing-related documents or a merger scheme through which they will list.

Mutual-fund units have a separate framework. There, sensitive information concerns a scheme’s value or its investors’ interests, as explained later.