The recent move by the Titas Gas Transmission and Distribution Company Limited to release 94.2 million shares is unlikely to be implemented any soon.

Thursday, May 10, 2012 Unknown
The recent move by the Titas Gas Transmission and Distribution Company Limited to release 94.2 million shares is unlikely to be implemented any soon.

The state-run gas distributor announced on Wednesday in the Dhaka Stock Exchange website that they would offload another 10 percent of their stakes for trading at the bourse.

The board of directors of Titas' mother company, Bangladesh Oil, Gas and Mineral Corporation (Petrobangla), has already approved the release of shares worth around Tk 6.89 billion at Wednesday's rate.

But the move conflicts with a Mar 23, 2010 notification of the stock market regulator Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) that orders sponsors, directors, auditors or officials of companies listed on the exchange to refrain from trading for two months ahead of the financial year's end and until its board of directors approves the annual statement.

Titas' financial year ends in June and the board of directors last year approved the financial statement on Oct 27. The approval for the year before that also came the same month.

"It is to be noted that Bangladesh Oil, Gas & Mineral Corporation (Petrobangla) as a sponsor of TITASGAS is in prohibitory period to offload shares of TITASGAS at this moment as per [the] SEC Notification�dated March 23, 2010. Therefore, the said offloading will be executed on due regulatory compliance," the DSE website read.

Titas gas directly listed on the bourse in 2008. The company has released 25 percent of it 942.1 million shares [against a paid up capital of Tk 942.1 million] and the government holds the remaining 75 percent.

Initiatives were taken to increase flow of state-owned companies' stakes in the capital market during the rise of market in 2010.

However, only these initiatives have yielded little over the last two years as only some shares of state-owned Rupali Bank, Jamuna Oil, Meghna Petroleum and Bangladesh Shipping Corporation hit the market during the period.

Other than them, Bangladesh Submarine Cables and Essential Drugs Company Limited are in the pipeline for listing.

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