News Details

SEC forms panel to probe glitch in stock trading system


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Sarwar A Chowdhury
The Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday formed a four-member panel to investigate a technical glitch in the electronic share transaction system, which forced the twin bourses to suspend share trading early in the day.

The stockmarket regulator also asked the inquiry committee to look into how the malfunction happened, whether there was a lack of monitoring by officials, and the nature and depth of the problem, officials said.

The market watchdog also asked the panel, headed by SEC Executive Director Md Ashraful Islam, to submit a report to the commission within next five working days.

The three other members of the body are SEC Director Rajib Ahmed and one representative each from the IT departments of the Dhaka and Chittagong stock exchanges.

Earlier in the morning, the technical glitch in the electronic share transaction system forced the Dhaka and Chittagong bourses to suspend stock trading for yesterday.

However, the trading would resume today, as the malfunction was fixed after 20 hours at 12 noon yesterday.

“It's alright now,” said MH Samad, managing director and chief executive officer of the CDBL, which operates the Central Depository System for the electronic share transaction.

“Hopefully everything will go fine in tomorrow's [today's] trade,” he said, adding that this is the first time we found a technical glitch in the CDBL system since its launch in October 2003.

The bourses suspended trading after the CDBL failed to complete Monday's trading settlement after the malfunction in its system.

The CDBL also requested the stock regulator to suspend trade for yesterday.

“The board took the decision of trade suspension at an urgent meeting in the morning [yesterday],” said Shafiqur Rahman, deputy general manager (public relations) of the Dhaka Stock Exchange.

The authorities also decided to keep the transaction suspended until the technical glitch in the CDBL system is fixed, he added.

After every day's stock trade, the transactions are settled with CDBL. But on Monday, seller brokers could not transfer the shares sold by them earlier on the day to their respective clearing accounts with the CDBL.

[ Business ] 2012-08-01