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Beximco Pharma makes debut on London bourse

REJAUL KARIM BYRON, from London
Beximco Pharmaceuticals yesterday became the first Bangladeshi company to trade on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) with its opening price clocking as much as 12.5 percent higher than the issue price.
The opening price hit as high as 67.50 pence per share against the issue price of 60 pence. The bullish trend on the very first day of trading on the London capital market sent the Beximco officials squealing with delight.
Trading formally started at 8:00 in
the morning (London time) with flying of balloons inside the LSE Building. British Minister for Pension Reforms Stephen Timms, MP, declared the trading open on the world's second largest capital market by pressing an electronic button.
Beximco Group Chairman Sohel F Rahman, Vice Chairman Salman F Rahman and Beximco Pharma Chief Executive Officer Nazmul Hasan were present at the inaugural ceremony. A good number of expatriate Bangladeshis were also present.
“We have started off in style by blazing a trail. This huge response of the foreign investors to our shares at the very beginning has made us happy,” Salman said.
“We are very happy to be the first Bangladeshi company as well as the first company from the Muslim world to have been listed on the AIM of the London Stock Exchange,” he told the brief opening ceremony.
He also said Beximco Pharma is the first firm to have issued GDR (global depository receipt) on the Alternative Investment Market of the London bourse with more than 2,800 companies quoted on the market worth over £ 3,580 billion.
Salman announced Beximco Textiles will soon follow suit and get listed on the London capital market in a year.
Responding to a question whether the listing will have any impact on the Bangladesh capital market, Salman said the local investors would be able to track the price on AIM through Beximco Pharma's ticker code on the LSE, which is BXP. As the opening price has shot beyond Tk 80-mark, it may push up share prices on Dhaka and Chittagong bourses, Salman said.
Asked why Beximco Pharma chose to venture into the London market, Salman said one of the main objectives was to exploit the world market under the WTO regime where India and China have lost the rights to patent copying, creating huge scope for large-scale export of pharmaceutical products from Bangladesh.
“We needed to go for expansion to boost the production, which calls for huge investment. But as it is not easy to raise such massive funds from Bangladesh market, we've turned to London market,” Salman said, adding that the expansion will create more than 500 newjobs.
Among the least developed countries that have been allowed to copy the patent until 2015, only Bangladesh has vast experience in the pharmaceuticals and there is a huge prospect, he also said.
Timms, the British minister, said he hopes trading of a Bangladeshi company on the London bourse would shore up the image of Bangladesh as well as confidence of prospective overseas investors. He was sanguine that such financial interaction will strengthen people-to-people relations between the
UK and Bangladesh.
The books for subscription of the GDRs closed in London on October 6, 2005. A total of two crore GDRs were issued to raise around Tk 142 crore from international institutional investors to be utilised to add new manufacturing lines, new processes and repay foreign currency debt.
In addition, the company is expected to raise approximately another Tk 57 crore by issuing 6.6 lakh GDR warrants.