Beximco Pharmaceuticals is the only Bangladeshi company listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange. The company was listed in 2005. Two decades after listing, one of Bangladesh’s leading drug makers is now facing a serious risk of being delisted. Because of its failure to publish audited financial statements, the company could be delisted from AIM within the first week of July.
Under AIM Rule 19, a company must publish its audited financial statements within six months of the end of its financial year. But Beximco Pharma has failed to submit its audited financial report for the 2024-25 financial year. As a result, trading in the company’s Global Depositary Receipts (GDRs) has been suspended since January 2 this year. AIM Rule 41 states that if GDR trading remains suspended for six months, the company’s listing may be cancelled. By that count, six months of suspended GDR trading will be completed on July 2 — leaving Beximco Pharma at serious risk of delisting.
To avoid the risk of delisting, six institutional investors in London-listed Beximco Pharma met the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC) last week and wrote to it seeking a respectable resolution of the matter. Acknowledging this, BSEC executive director and acting spokesman Abul Kalam told Amar Desh that, with the interests of domestic and foreign investors and the country’s image in mind, the BSEC was treating the matter with importance and that the commission would take the necessary steps.
Trading in Beximco Pharma’s ordinary shares on Bangladesh’s bourses — the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) and the Chittagong Stock Exchange (CSE) — remains normal. While the company’s ordinary shares trade on the Bangladesh market, on the London Stock Exchange it is GDRs, rather than ordinary shares, that are traded. A GDR is a financial instrument through which a company’s shares from one country can be bought and sold on another country’s stock market; the shares are held with an international bank, which issues GDRs against them, allowing foreign investors to invest without going directly to the Bangladesh market. Citibank NA serves as the main trustee or depositary bank for the issuance and management of Beximco’s GDRs on the LSE.
According to relevant sources, on January 1, 2025 the capital-market regulator, the BSEC, appointed independent directors to three Beximco Group companies, including Beximco Pharma; the other two were Beximco Limited and Shinepukur Ceramics. But the company challenged the BSEC decision with a writ petition in court, and the court imposed an injunction on the decision, suspending its effect. After the Appellate Division stayed the injunction, the commission — then led by chairman Khondoker Rashed Maksood — directed the managing directors, CFOs and company secretaries of the three companies, including Beximco Pharma, at a meeting on January 15 this year to hold board meetings within 12 days. But although the directive was issued, it was not implemented, and the complication over publishing the company’s audited financial statements was not resolved. Beximco Pharma’s company secretary, Mohammad Asad Ullah, did not answer his phone when called for comment.
The vice-chairman of Beximco Pharmaceuticals’ board was Salman F Rahman, who had been former prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s adviser on private investment and industry. After Sheikh Hasina fled to India during the student-people uprising on August 5, 2024, Salman F Rahman went into hiding; he was later detained by law-enforcement agencies on August 13 that year and is currently in jail. Salman F Rahman, who has been widely discussed over allegations including market manipulation, has been banned for life from the capital market. The BSEC under Rashed Maksood had also fined him 100 crore taka over various irregularities relating to the withdrawal of funds from the IFIC Bank-guaranteed Sripur Township Green Zero Coupon Bond and the Beximco Green Sukuk.
A board meeting and an annual general meeting (AGM) are mandatory to finalise and approve the financial report for the 2024-25 financial year. But because of legal complications over the formation of the board, Beximco’s board meeting is not taking place. As a result, with the company failing to submit its audited financial report, GDR trading in Beximco Pharma has been suspended since 7:30 a.m. on January 2 this year. A senior BSEC official said trading in London could resume only after the financial report is approved and published through a board meeting, once the higher court’s decision comes. ‘For this, the court case needs to be settled first,’ he said.
According to relevant sources, the company has a total of 446,112,089 (446.11 million) shares or GDRs on the international market. According to the latest London Exchange figures, its market capitalisation is about 189.60 million pounds (£189.6 million) — roughly 3,128.40 crore taka.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report