Nepal Bangladesh Bank's share trade to resume from today

ShareSansar, March 3:

Trading of the shares of Nepal Bangladesh Bank, which was stalled for the past few weeks owing to share ownership transfer row, will resume from today.

Though the Brokers’ Association had decided to resume the trade in NBB scrips since Wednesday after the bank decided to put off its upcoming Annual General Meeting and revoked the book closure date for the same, the trading could not resume owing to “technical snags” with the stock exchange.

“The problem has been fixed and the trading of Nepal Bangladesh Bank will resume today,” NEPSE spokesperson Niranjan Phuyal told ShareSansar today.

The Annual General Meeting was slated for March 11. Besides announcing the book closure on February 17 for the AGM, the bank had even announced adjusted base of Rs 552.

The AGM was expected to endorse 10 percent bonus shares and 7.79 percent cash dividend from the net profit the commercial bank earned in the last fiscal year 2069/70, besides electing some directors.

In a bid to settle the complications related to the ownership transfer of NB Bank, stakeholders, including investors and brokers had been urging the SEBON and NEPSE officials to defer the AGM.

The regulator is also probing the ownership transfer row.

The share ownership transfer complication has led to possible loss worth millions of rupees for more than 1 thousand investors who bought some shares of the bank unknowingly.

The ownership transfer row started after Pradhan and Shrestha obtained 220,000 units of ordinary shares from Laxmi Bahadur Shrestha, a promoter of NB Group and a former NBB director, for a loan.

While transferring the ownership of the shares, Laxmi Bahadur had made them sign another agreement, which barred them from selling those shares.  However, the duo went on to seek marginal lending by placing the same shares as collateral at Narayani National Finance.

Then they failed to repay the loan and the finance company sold the shares in the secondary market.

Laxmi Bahadur then filed a law suit against Pradhan and Shrestha at the Kathmandu District Court against the sale of the shares, and the court ruled in his favor asking the concerned authorities to stop transferring ownership of shares sold by the finance company.

Now Pradhan and company argue that they cannot be held responsible as they had only sought marginal lending from the finance company, and had not sold the shares to anyone else.