February 19, 2002	Tuesday	Zilhaj 6, 1422

KARACHI, Feb 18: Asim Textile Mills Limited — the textile spinning unit with nearly 15 million outstanding shares — has sought voluntary delisting from the Karachi Stock Exchange.

In a letter to the KSE, the company said that it wished to get itself voluntarily delisted from the KSE, while continuing to trade at other two bourses — LSE and ISE.

The company cited: “As the entire operations are being conducted in Punjab and the majority of the shareholders are also resident here”, as the reason for going off the KSE quotation board. The company has asked the KSE to communicate the formalities it must observe for delisting from the bourse.

While there does not seem to be anything in law against new companies seeking listing on all or either of the three stock exchanges, the Asim Textile’s case looks to be the first to selectively abandon any of the exchange where it had continued to be traded for as long as a decade. It would, therefore, be interesting to see how the stock exchange and the Regulators deal with the case.

With the market price of the company’s stock at a huge 88 per cent discount to the par value, and nil dividends, it would be more of an academic interest to the investors. But for the rest of the publicly traded companies, the outcome is likely to set a precedent.