The advisory committee of the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday recommended that the commission should finalise the draft amendment to the book-building method soon.
The SEC chairman and members and representatives of the Investment Corporation of Bangladesh, Bangladesh Publicly Listed Companies, the Centre for Policy Dialogue, Dhaka and Chittagong bourse, Bangladesh Bank, and Bangladesh Merchant Bankers' Association, among others, are on the 19-member advisory committee.
The committee in its first meeting on Monday discussed a range of issues including offloading of shares of state-owned enterprises, stepping up market capital surveillance by the commission, and omnibus account guideline. But, the key agenda of the meeting were finalising the draft amendment to the book-building method and enhancing the monitoring of margin loan disbursement, meeting sources said.
They said the SEC informed the meeting that the draft of the amendment to the book-building method would be sent to the stakeholders for their opinion by next week.
The book-building method was introduced in 2009 so that a company can discover the share price under an initial public offering based on the biddings made by institutional investors.
The capital market regulator suspended the method on January 20 as per a government directive issued after the latest stock market debacle and following widespread criticism of it.
The method drew severe criticism from stakeholders as a number of companies had been allowed to float shares with the price-earning ratio standing at more than 50, although the ideal P/E ratio for any issue is considered to be 15.
The committee also emphasised offloading the shares of state-owned enterprises immediately to meet the increasing demand of the market.
'If the procedure goes as per the plan, the government shares will hit the market by August,' meeting sources said.
BPLC president Salman F Rahman said after the meeting, 'We discussed a number of issues and the book-building method was one of the key agenda of the meeting.'
He said the SEC took an initiative to strengthen its market monitoring with collaboration with Bangladesh Bank.
The committee also discussed a possible change in the index calculation method of the bourses, he added.
Source : New Age
