Shikhar Consultants (SCL) was incorporated in 1992 by Babulal Agarwal, the chairman of the company, along with Bharat Deora. SCL is engaged in fee-based financial services like advice to public issues, project counselling, capital structuring, etc. The corporate office is based in Bombay. It is also involved in trading in shares and securities. It came out with a public issue of 27 lac equity shares at par aggregating Rs 2.7 cr in Feb.'95, to partly meet its requirement (Rs 4.50 cr) for investment transactions, leasing and bill discounting. At present, SCL holds the category-IV merchant banker status and has applied to SEBI for upgrading it to category-I. The major contributor to profitability is the share trading activity. The company is looking forward to the year ahead with cautious optimism in view of the bad capital market conditions. SCL is diversifying into allied activities such as merchant banking, underwriting, management consultancy, etc. It is also planning to acquire stock broker membership of premier stock exchanges and also explore the possibilities of commodity trading and exports to ensure steady growth. During the financial year 1995-96 the company's performance suffered a set-back during the year,largely on account of the prolonged sluggishness in the Financial Services Sector.The Stock,Money and Capital Markets continued to be extremely difficult with illquidity and erosion in asset values being the dominant values.