Dhaka bourse talks demutulisation with ADB chief today

Officials of Dhaka Stock Exchange will sit with Asian Development Bank's Country Director Thevakumar Kandiah today to discuss how to complete the bourse's demutualisation soon.
The meeting will take place at the prime bourse's office in the capital.
Demutualisation will transform the bourse from an entity owned by mostly brokerage members into a for-profit company of the shareholders.
The process is expected to ensure sound corporate governance, alternative business models and operational efficiency. A demutualised exchange can freely trade on the market like a public company.
The ADB will help implement the process of demutualisation, said Fayekuzzaman, managing director of Investment Corporation of Bangladesh.
The committee of demutualisation and the bourses are working to complete the process soon, he said.
"The process of demutualisation will start soon in line with the concept paper made by the Dhaka bourse," said Mosharraf Hossain, chief executive officer of the DSE.
Hossain said the Dhaka bourse is working to complete the process by this year.
Dhaka and Chittagong bourses submitted individual concept papers on the process of demutualisation to Finance Minister AMA Muhith last week.
The DSE chief said the bourse will take initiatives to strengthen its compliance department to restore confidence of the investors.
"We are working to raise investor confidence as the premier bourse is working to lower the investment risk," he said.
In the concept paper, the DSE proposed to offload 30 percent shares of the bourse to public and 20 percent shares to different institutional investors.
All shares will be offloaded in three years, the paper said.
According to the paper, only corporate brokerage houses will be eligible to obtain registration as a broker on a stock exchange after the demutualisation.
In line with the concept paper, the existing directors of the premier bourse will be termed independent directors after the demutualisation process, DSE proposed.
However, stocks continued to gain in the first week of 2012.
The benchmark General Index of the DSE advanced 3.98 percent or 202.39 points to end the week at 5,467 points.
Turnover almost doubled last week and stood at Tk 619 crore, up 48.01 percent from the previous week.
Among the financial sector, non-bank financial institutes were the top gainers, going up 10.80 percent, followed by general insurance by 7.44 percent, life insurance by 2.57 percent and banks by 1.23 percent.
Telecommunication advanced 8.07 percent, cement 7.27 percent, while pharmaceuticals and power sector gained around 4 percent each.