SEC turns down Titas plea for time extension

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The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Sunday rejected the time extension prayer by the state-owned gas distribution company, Titas, for offloading a substantial number of unsold shares.

A company seeking to go for direct listing has to offload 10 per cent shares of its paid-up capital within 30 trading days from its debut trading day, according to the direct listing regulations.

"The SEC did not consider the application of the company that sought two-month time more for offloading its 10 per cent shares of the existing paid up capital," Farhad Ahmed, executive director of the SEC, told reporters after the meeting with the bourses and merchant banks.

Until the 22nd trading day on last Sunday, 655850 shares were sold on both the stock exchanges - DSE and CSE, according to the ICB, the sales agent. The company will have to offload around 7.8 million shares in the remaining eight days as per regulations.

Farhad said, "It is still possible to offload the rest of the shares within the stipulated period. Offloading of the unsold Titas shares is not a problem as the market has capacity to adsorb the same."

"The market has also the capacity to absorb the big issue of Grameenphone which is expected to hit the market by the year-end," he added.

Senior vice president of the DSE Saiful Islam said, "The commission in reply to its prayer for time extension has directed the Titas to comply with the direct listing regulations."

In the remaining trading days, it will have to offload 7.8 million shares, meaning that the Titas will have to sell more than 0.87 million shares a day, that appears difficult if the current buying trend persisted.