Supervision of Private Banks by the Iranian Security and Exchange Organization From the Viewpoint of Transparency and Efficiency as Principles of Public Law

According to Article 31 of the the Monetary and Banking Law of Iran, banks may only be incorporated as public joint-stock companies with registered shares. Moreover, according to Article 36 of the Law on Permanent Provisions of Economic, Social and Cultural Development Programs, all public joint-stock companies are required to register with the Iranian Security and Exchange Organization (SEO) as the custodian and supervisor of the capital markets. Thus, establishment of any banks requires initial public offering of banks' shares and conducting secondary transactions needs registration at Tehran Stock Exchange or Iran FaraBourse Co. (IFB). Consequently, all banks are necessarily considered issuers of securities and therefore they are under the supervision of the SEO and subject to the regulations approved by the Securities & Exchange High Council and the rules set by the relevant stock exchange. The purpose of this paper is to examine the institutions that oversee the capital market, the scope of their powers and how they monitor banks, and their compliance with the principles of public law, including transparency and efficiency. To this end, after examining the issue from the perspective of monitoring securities transactions, disclosure of information and corporate governance as three main areas of bank supervision, the study’s findings suggest that the oversight of the banks by the capital market supervisory institutions, leads to transparency in the performance of banks and the protection of of investors interests. However, due to the overlapping jurisdiction of the regulators of the money market and the capital market over banks, in some cases oversight can disrupt the banks efficiency.