Saturday, December 6, 2008

Nepse shows abnormal behaviour

It happens only in Nepal. It has happened earlier also, when Maoists walked out of the government, Nepse gained.
And this time too, a week after Securities Board of Nepal (Sebon) chairman Dr Chiranjivi Nepal put in his papers, the Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) index gained 22.73 points to reach 754.91 points - from last week's closing of 732.18 points - giving a clue to long-suspected manipulation of the market. Under normal conditions, the market should plunged after the board chair went vacant.
All key market propellers - commercial banks, development banks, finance companies, hydropower companies gained, posting 741.85 points, 1137.28 points, 980.77 points and 950.23 points, respectively. Only the insurance company group ended in negative territory, shedding 11.78 points to tumble to 759.57 points.
The sensitive index - the barometer of group-A companies - also gained 3.92 points to climb to 198.48 points. The domination of group- A companies continued this week too as they contributed 77.30 per cent to the total amount transacted. Similarly, the float index - calculated on the basis of real transactions - rose by 0.99 points to reach 73.17 points.
Shareholders of Bank of Kathmandu, this week, gained the most as in terms of monetary value, Bank of Kathmandu (with Rs 88.43 million), Siddhartha Bank (with Rs 44.48 million), Standard Chartered Bank Nepal (with Rs 31.60 million) and Sanima Bikas Bank (with Rs 27.92 million) and Nepal Investment Bank (with Rs 23.07 million) were top scorers.
The market wound up in negative territory for three days in its five-day session. However, it opened in green on Sunday. Nepse gained 18.53 points that day and 15.05 points on Monday to rise to 761.67 points on Tuesday. However, it dipped on Wednesday and Thursday.
In terms of numbers of share units traded, Bank of Kathmandu topped the chart with 43,000-unit shares while in terms of number of transactions Prabhu Finance topped the chart with 421 transactions.
Narayani Finance, Annapurna Bikas Bank, International Leasing and Finance and Guheshwori Merchant and Finance listed their rights shares whereas Diprox Bikas Bank listed its 52,200-unit of bonus shares at Nepse.The government and other institutions' bonds and debentures could not generate public interest in the secondary market. Nepse did not witness any such transaction. Similar was the fate of Over The Counter (OTC) market that also has not seen a single transaction since it started a few months back.

New Sebon chief anytime soon
KATHMANDU: The Finance Ministry will appoint a new chairman of Sebon early this week, according to a ministry source. A retired bureaurocrat is tipped to be the most probable candidate for the post. The post went vacant when Dr Chiranjivi Nepal resigned the chairmanship citing 'no seriousness' on part of Finance Minister Dr Baburam Bhattarai towards developing the capital market. Meanwhile, the government also announced a vacancy for the post of Nepse's general manager. The incumbent general manager Rewat Bahadur Karki has got an extension after his tenure ended three months ago. Karki will stay until a successor is named.

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