May 3, 2002	Friday	Safar 19, 1423

KARACHI, May 2: If the decision by Dewan Salman Fibre Limited (DSFL) to issue preference shares goes through, it would be the first preferred stock to make a comeback in the Pakistani equity market, after an absence of more than 40 years.

The DSFL Board had voted in a mid-April meeting to ‘pursue issue of preference shares’ and the proposal would be forwarded to the members at an Extra Ordinary General Meeting to be called ‘within 60 days’.

Currently, of the 741 quoted stocks, there are only three ‘preference’ shares on the Karachi Stock Exchange — issued way back in 1957 and 1961: 7 per cent preference shares of Frontier Sugar Mills; 6 per cent preference shares of Saleem Sugar Mills and participating preference shares also of the same company.

Only a couple of years ago the government re-opened the route for corporates — vide the Finance Bill — to raise capital through the issue of shares of classes other than the ‘ordinary’. The DSFL preference stock issue — the size, dividend rate and timing of which are yet to be determined — may then be the first to make the