Regulator ready to approve IPO in a month

The securities regulator BSEC is ready to approve an initial public offering (IPO) within a month once all the documents required for going public are okay, its chief Shibli Rubayat Ul Islam has said.

“If the good companies file the documents with the accurate information in line with the securities rules, it is possible to approve the IPO within three to four weeks,” he said at an event in Dhaka on Sunday.

In most cases, companies lack proper documents while filing IPOs to the regulator and for this, they need to answer a lot of quarries asked by the auditor and regulator, he said. “This process delays an IPO approval,” he said.

“When a company wants to enter the capital market through manipulated documents, they fail to provide proper documents. If it is asked to provide proper documents, it takes a long time to submit the corrected documents and even sometimes they fail to do so. They later blame the regulator for not approving the IPO. That is the reality,” he said.

The BSEC chief warned of tough action as per the securities rules against the companies that provide wrong information in league with auditors.

“Previously, one of the barriers to listing on the capital market was the placement trade, which was stamped out,” he said.

Speaking at the event organised by Business Hour, a news portal, former BSEC Chairman Faruq Ahmad Siddiqi said still many anomalies have been taking place in the stock market, which discourages many good companies to list on the stock market.