BSEC orders to suspend 15 traders for attempt to deceitfully sell shares

Stock market regulator Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC) on Monday ordered the chief executive officers and the managing directors of nine brokerage houses to suspend 15 of their authorised traders from trading in share markets as these traders followed a deceitful way to decrease share prices violating the laws.

Traders or authorised representatives, as stated in the securities laws, of the brokerage houses mainly conduct trading in the market, buying shares or executing buy-sell order on investors’ behalf through abiding by the specific laws and code of conducts.

According to BSEC sources, these 15 include five traders of ICB Securities Trading Company, two each of Rashid Investment Services and Shyamal Equity Management, and one each of Parkway Securities, Qayyum Securities, Mercantile Bank Securities, TA Khan Securities, JKC Securities and Kazi Equity.

On Monday, after the market opened in the morning, these 15 traders placed zero-price or market price bulk sale orders of shares of several big companies without asking any price violating the securities laws and the code of conducts, thus, dragging down the share price of those certain companies to a lowest price, followed by a big fall in the market.

Say, market price of a company’s share is Tk 100 and, as per law, daily share price must not fall more than by 2 per cent meaning that the lowest price will be no less than Tk 98. But when the trading started, these 15 authorised traders of nine houses placed buy orders of several big companies at market price and zero price. In that case, number of shares are mentioned without citing the price of share, thus, the shares of those companies were automatically sold at the lowest prices for the day.

When asked BSEC spokesperson Mohammad Rezaukl Karim told Prothom Alo that sale orders were placed from 15 workstations of nine brokerage houses violating the laws after trading started for the day. So, those certain nine brokerage firms were ordered to suspend their 15 traders, he added.

When asked Shyamal Equity Management managing director Sajedul Islam told Prothom Alo, “We are yet to receive any letters in relation to suspending our traders. I am not aware of this matter I will learn about it once I receive the letter.”