DSE to pay Tk 72cr to 17,332 investors hit by scams

The Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) will pay up to Tk 5 lakh each to 17,332 investors affected by the embezzlement of five brokerage houses.

The compensation process is set to begin on September 28, DSE Chairman Mominul Islam announced at a press conference yesterday at the bourse’s office in Nikunja, Dhaka.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

The five brokerage houses are Moshihor Securities, Banco Securities, Crest Securities, Tamha Securities, and Shah Mohammad Sagir & Company Ltd.

A total of 17,925 investors have submitted claims amounting to more than Tk 250 crore, Mominul said. Of them, 17,332 investors will receive a total of Tk 72 crore from the Investors Protection Fund (IPF) under the DSE.

The payout means nearly 97 percent of the investors who submitted claims will receive their full dues, he said.

So far, some of the affected investors have received Tk 37.60 crore in compensation through a joint initiative of the IPF and the brokerage houses, according to the DSE chairman.

Measures are also being taken to repay the outstanding amounts owed to the remaining investors through the sale of assets and shares of the defaulting brokerage houses and from the IPF, he said.

Terming the compensation initiative a “milestone” event for the country’s capital market, Mominul said, “Many people had invested their savings or pension money with these institutions and were living in inhumane conditions. This initiative by the DSE will go a long way towards restoring the confidence of ordinary people in the market.”

The DSE established the IPF to compensate investors affected by defaults or other failures by brokerage houses. Currently, brokerage houses deposit a portion of the interest earned on their consolidated customer accounts into the fund every six months.

Asked about the embezzlement of funds from Salta Capital, DSE Managing Director Nuzhat Anwar said the matter was still under investigation and declined to comment.

In response to a separate question, Mominul said the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC) and the DSE were taking measures to prevent similar incidents at brokerage houses.

Technology has already been introduced to make it difficult for brokerage houses to misappropriate money from consolidated customer accounts (CCAs), even if they attempt to do so, he said.

“That is why no such incident has occurred in the past two and a half years,” Mominul said, adding that the cases that have come to light relate to earlier periods.

MARKET REFORMS

Meanwhile, speaking on reforms, Nuzhat said work on introducing scrip netting and T+1 settlement was progressing rapidly to increase market liquidity and speed up transactions.

The DSE is targeting implementation of the measures by December 2026 with BSEC’s cooperation, she said.

Work is also under way to introduce financial derivatives. After completing the necessary system upgrades, investor awareness and financial literacy initiatives, the DSE plans to launch derivatives by January 2028.

The DSE MD also said a separate platform for open-ended mutual funds is being developed to improve investor access and market discipline. The platform is expected to go live by mid-November, allowing investors to directly buy, sell and redeem mutual funds.

She said investor and market protection would remain a priority during the reforms to ensure that the transition to a technology-driven market does not disrupt existing services.

NEW WEBSITE

The DSE also launched a new website -- new.dsebd.org -- yesterday to make market information more accessible to domestic and foreign investors.

The DSE said several changes have been introduced to the new website. For example, information related to individual companies has been organised according to international standards in the company-based search system. As a result, users will now be able to access all relevant information about a company with a single click, without having to visit separate pages.

Stock market laws and regulations have also been consolidated on a single page to make them easier to access.

However, for the convenience of ordinary investors, both the old and new DSE websites will remain operational until the end of December this year.