Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Seven aspirant brokers file case against Nepse

Benchmark Securities filed a case today against Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse), Securities Board of Nepal (Sebon), and the Finance Ministry — making it to a total of seven aspirant brokers filing cases against the recent decision of Nepse on their disqualification to sit for the practical examination on October 9.
Benchmark Securities has asked the Court to let its new managing director sit for the practical examination that is scheduled for October 9 instead of its former managing director, who is currently abroad.
"Nepse denied entrance card to the company's new managing director," said lawyer of Benchmark Securities Sri Kanta Regmi. "Nepse took three years to conduct the examination and it expects that the people will wait for the examination for eternity," he said, adding that it is against the law of natural justice. "The company has the right to appoint new managing director," he said.
However, according to Nepse, only the managing director can sit for the practical examination of 25 marks.
Earlier, six aspirant brokers filed cases on Sunday, claiming that they can not be disqualified. Mechikali Securities, A and A Securities, Om Sri Ganesh Securities and Trinity Securities have been disqualified to sit for the test on the basis of insufficient paid-up capital. They said their paid-up capital is in accordance with Company Act guidelines. Sky Securities and Crystal Kanchanjunggha Securities have been disqualified on the basis of their directors being involved with other firms as well.
Similarly, the other two companies have told the Court that their directors have resigned from other firms.
The Court has yesterday issued show-cause notices to Nepse, Sebon and the Finance Ministry in the two cases.
"We are hopeful of getting a verdict on Thursday," the lawyer said.
Nepse has disqualified 25 companies and only 137 were qualified out of 162 companies that have reapplied.
Currently, there are only 25 brokers, out of whom only a dozen are active. Nepse plans to add 25 more stock brokers to make it a total of 50 brokers.
Nepse has after a long struggle of almost three years fixed the date of brokers' examination for this Saturday. It had asked the aspirants to restate their eligibility as per the required criteria and only those that can prove they are still eligible can appear in the test. Some 162 companies showed their eligibility but only 137 are selected for the examination after the verification of the information provided by the applicants.
The selection process was halted in February 2008 when Nepse had already selected 316 applicants from the total of 336 applicants that had to go through a test of 25 marks. But Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) halted the process, questioning the transparency in the appointment process just the day before the test was going to take place

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