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Investors please beware!

April 08, 2010 00:00:00


A power company is in the process of coming into the stock market within a couple of weeks' time. The company is non-viable. Its per unit electricity production cost per KW is Tk. 18.00 plus, because it runs only on furnace oil. Because of this, the government was always very reluctant to buy electricity from this company during the last 12 years.
The foreign companies, which actually owned 80% shares of the power entity, being frustrated with their return on investment, sold their entire holding to the present local owners at only 10% of the face value of shares only one year ago. This junk company has completed its 13 years of life out of 15 years of contract with the government. After two years the company will be a dead project. Having understood this fact, the present owners planned to transfer the project onto the shoulders of small investors in the stock market at an abnormally high price through manipulation.
It is alleged that the owners prepared false accounts with revaluation of assets, made a syndicate with some selected institutional investors and broker houses, in association with some SEC officers to make the indicative price abnormally high through fake buying in the book building process by the syndicate members. The evil design has been to encourage people to buy shares at a high price so that the owners, along with all members of the syndicate, can make a huge capital gain. If the lock-in period of the institutional investors had been one year instead of only 15 days, such manipulation would not have been possible by the institutional investors.
The power company management made false financial projections for the next five years, while their project has a life of only a couple of years. The owners of the power company are trying to take away billions of taka from the ignorant small investors in the stock market selling each of their shares between Tk. 300 and 400, which were bought one year back from their foreign partners at Tk. 2.0 only! So, small investors please beware of this company. We appeal to the regulator to look into the matter pending its trading.
Dr. Wahed Khalil
Noyatola, Mogbazar, Dhaka

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