The Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday decided to withdraw its order suspending the operations of five brokerage houses with effect from today.
The commission, in the wake of the current equities market debacle, convened an emergency meeting and decided to withdraw the suspension imposed on the houses for their alleged involvement in aggressive share sales on January 20, the day on which the capital market had collapsed.
The brokerages are Al-Arafah Islami Bank Ltd, Dhaka Bank Ltd, NCC Bank Ltd, PFI Securities Ltd, Alliance Securities and Management Ltd, and IIDFC Securities Ltd.
'The clients of the five brokerage houses will be able to trade shares from Tuesday,' said a commission official.
He, however, said the suspension of the chief executive officers or managing directors of the brokerage houses would remain in force until the end of the ongoing investigation.
The capital market regulators on January 25 suspended six brokerage houses –the five mentioned above and the NCC Bank – and their chief executives for 30 days after it had found their involvement in aggressive selling on January 20 when the general indices of Dhaka and Chittagong bourses had plunged by around 600 points in just five minutes of trading.
The commission also launched an investigation into the alleged aggressive selling by the brokerage firms and asked the account-holders with the houses to trade in shares by opening link accounts with other brokerages.
Five of the brokerage houses, except the NCC Bank, on January 23 submitted petitions to the High Court against the suspension order but a HC bench of Justice AHM Shamsuddin Chowdhury and Justice Sheikh Md Zakir Hossain summarily rejected them.
The regulators withdrew the suspension imposed on the NCC Bank on January 26 after the bank had apologised but the SEC continued with the probe into its alleged involvement in aggressive share selling on January 20.
The commission on January 30 allowed the accountholders with IIDFC to trade in shares through Bank Asia and MTB Securities Limited.
SEC officials said the decision to withdraw the suspension of five firms was taken considering the plight of general investors and to build confidence among them as the market had taken a deep plunge in the past three trading days.
Commission member Yeasin Ali told New Age that they had received reports against the brokerages houses from the six probe committees.
'We will now serve show-cause notices to the houses and ask them to reply them by 10 days. We will decide our next actions based on their replies,' he said.
Source: New Age
