HC order on Khulna Printing IPO stayed

The Appellate Division has stayed Wednesday's High Court order that stopped the IPO of Khulna Printing and Packaging Ltd (KPPL) from going ahead. Chamber judge justice Hasan Foez Siddique of the Appellate Division stayed the HC order for two weeks on Thursday. Barrister Rokon Uddin Mahmud represented KPPL in the court on the last working day of the week. On Wednesday, the HC bench of justices Mirza Hussain Haider and Muhammad Khurshid Alam Sarkar stayed all further proceedings of the KPPL IPO after initial hearing of a petition. Media reports including those in the bdnews24.com indicated KPPL's effort to project inflated revenues and sales to attract strong public response. The company got the market regulator's clearance to raise Tk 400 million by issuing 40 million shares on Mar 4 this year. Its IPO prospectus says the firm's revenue in 2009 -10 fiscal was Tk 340 million , but the very next year it rose by a staggering 247 percent to Tk 1.19 billion.