SEBI Open Market Buybacks: Which Stocks Benefit?

SEBI Open Market Buybacks Are Back, and the Stakes Are High SEBI's June 2026 board decision to reinstate open market buybacks via stock exchanges, effective August 1, 2026, is not a minor procedural update. It's a structural reset in how India's largest companies can return cash to shareholders. Under the new framework, companies must complete buybacks within 66 working days and deploy at least 40% of earmarked funds in the first half of that window. That front-loading requirement is deliberate. It prevents companies from announcing buybacks as price-support theatre and then quietly doing nothing. Open market buybacks were suspended in 2024 after SEBI grew concerned about manipulation risks. The reinstatement, with tighter guardrails, signals regulatory confidence that the mechanism can work cleanly. For investors, the practical implication is straightforward: expect a wave of buyback announcements from August onward, concentrated in sectors that have accumulated significant cash reserves. IT majors and FMCG leaders are the most obvious candidates, with select PSUs not far behind. The question isn't just who will announce. It's who can actually deliver at scale, and what that means for stock prices. IT Sector Leads the Queue India's listed IT companies are sitting on combined cash and equivalents that run into tens of thousands of crores. [Infosys](/stock/INFY) (NSE: INFY) ended FY25 with free cash flow of approximately ₹27,000 crore. [TCS](/stock/TCS) (NSE: TCS) generated over ₹46,000 crore in operating cash flow in the same period. These aren't companies scraping together buyback funds. They're companies with a capital allocation problem, in the best possible sense. [Wipro](/stock/WIPRO) (NSE: WIPRO) and [HCL Technologies](/stock/HCLTECH) (NSE: HCLTECH) have historically been more conservative with buyback sizing, but the regulatory green light may change that calculus. When a buyback must be 40% deployed within the first 33 working days, the price support e...