Retail investors go on hunger strike tomorrow
Retail investors in mutual funds have announced a programme to go on 'hunger strike unto death' from tomorrow to protest the market regulator's intervention.
The Securities and Exchange Commission restrictions led to a sharp decline in the prices of each and every mutual funds unit last week.
“It's not possible for us to bear the losses caused by SEC's move. If this declining trend continues we will lose everything and there is no alternative to going on hunger strike,” MA Bashar Dablu, convener of the Share Market Retail Investors Forum, told a press briefing in Dhaka yesterday.
“The only way is the withdrawal of all restrictions the SEC has imposed on mutual funds in recent times."
The commission on December 17 set new criteria for margin loans for mutual funds after about two months of suspension. The regulator said mutual funds must trade in a limited range to qualify for margin loans.
The funds that will trade 7.5 percent higher than their latest NAV (net asset value) will not qualify for the loans. It means if a mutual fund has Tk 100 in NAV per unit and trades only up to Tk 107.50 (7.5 percent higher than NAV), margin loans can be approved for the fund.
On December 23, the SEC announced that the mutual funds having no maturity period would have to pull out of the market by December 2011.
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