Eastern Bank zooms 36pc on dividend, rights news
Private sector Eastern Bank Ltd on Wednesday announced a handsome 34 per cent stock dividend and a 2:1 rights issue (one share for every two held) that helped the DSE General Index or DGEN close 51.58 points higher at 3,077.15 points compared with 3,025.57 on Tuesday.
The announcement, made in the early hours of trading, lifted Eastern Bank's shares by more than Tk 400 before it closed the day at Tk 1,352.50, 36.4 per cent higher than Tuesday's closing of Tk 991.50. A total of 1,23,440 EBL shares worth Tk 16.44 crore were traded on Wednesday.
“Along with Eastern Bank, some other heavyweight securities such as Uttara Bank, AB Bank and Square Pharma pulled up the day's indices,” said Yawer Sayeed, Managing Director and CEO of AIMS of Bangladesh, an asset management company. Many investors also booked profits that reflected in the prices of many securities dropping. After the early trading hour's jump, the market was stable rest of the day, which was a good sign, he added.
Another private bank, Trust Bank, informed the exchange that its net profit after tax for 2007 was Tk 23.90 crore, almost twice of what it had inadvertently reported earlier. The news was posted on the DSE website at 2:54pm, 54 minutes after the day's closing of trade.
The exchange recorded a turnover of Tk 339.19 crore. Of the total issues traded, 106 advanced and 139 declined and 13 were unchanged.
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