Share transfer row finally over; NEPSE directs NB Bank to hold its deferred AGM

ShareSansar, May 30:

With the share transfer row of Nepal Bangladesh Bank Limited finally over, Nepal Stock Exchange Limited (NEPSE) has given green signal to the bank to summon its Annual General Meeting.

“We have just received instruction from NEPSE to convene the AGM,” NB Bank’s company secretary Dhiraj Raj Subedi told ShareSansar today. “Our Board of Directors will within a day or two to announce the fresh date for the AGM.”

He added that the shareholders can expect fresh AGM notice within a few days.

He further informed that the AGM will be scheduled in the first or the second week of Ashad, as the bank might issue a 15-day or 21-day notice for the AGM as required by the Company Act.

In the first week of May NB Bank had applied with NEPSE to hold its deferred Annual General Meeting at the earliest.

NB Bank officials have also clarified that there will not be any changes in the AGM plan that could affect interest of the shareholders, and that the dividend pledged by the company will not be altered.

The share transfer row ended after NEPSE asked the concerned brokers to start transferring shares from Nirmal Pradhan and party as compensation to the shareholders who have been victimized in the process as he agreed to compensate the victims.

SEBON officials maintain that they suspended the ban placed on trading in shares held by Nirmal Pradhan and company on April 2 after they pledged to compensate the victimized share investors by within a month.

Back in the first week of March, SEBON has directed NEPSE to stop trading shares held by Nirmal Pradhan, his wife and three sons, and his relatives Laxmi Bahadur Shrestha, Shankar Kumar Shrestha and Nabin Shrestha along with the scrips registered in the names of three of his share trading companies — Rajdhani Investment, Bagmati Investment and Lhotse Investment.

The regulator issued the directive after investing the complications stemming from the share ownership transfer row of NBB and National Hydropower Limited (NHPC) owing to the dispute between the Nirmal Pradhan and NB Groups.

Due to the dispute between the two groups, NB Bank has been forced to put off its Annual General Meeting 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.

The share ownership transfer complication has led to possible loss worth millions of rupees for more than 1,000 investors who bought some shares of the bank unknowingly.

It all started after Pradhan and Shrestha obtained 220,000 units of ordinary shares from Laxmi Bahadur Shrestha, a promoter of NB Group and a former NB Bank 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.

To pressurize the concerned parties to settle the festering share transfer row, brokers had stopped trading shares held by Pradhan and company as well as that of NB Bank for some time in February.