March 1, 2003	Saturday	Zul Hijjah 27, 1423

KARACHI, Feb 28: The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) said that nearly 89 per cent of the 617 companies that it monitored for timely holding of Annual General Meetings (AGMs) during 2001-02, were found compliant.

Under the Companies Ordinance, 1984 listed companies are required to hold AGMs at least once in every calendar year within a period of six months of the close of their financial year.

The Enforcement and Monitoring Division (EMD) of the SECP, said in a recent report, that of the 617 companies monitored, 548 companies held their meetings within the specified time period whereas 69 companies failed to do so.

The percentage of compliance, nonetheless improved 5 per cent from the earlier year, when 534 of the 635 companies monitored had held AGMs within the prescribed period and in an orderly manner.

In the quarter ended June 2002, AGMs were due by 275 companies of which 238 were held; in quarter ended September, 221 companies held their annual meetings, of the 241 that were due and at the end of December, 93 companies were supposed to hold their AGMs of which 82 complied. The EMD was said to have initiated proceedings against companies who had defaulted in holding AGMs within the prescribed period. “As a consequence of these proceedings, penalties were imposed on 17 companies and their directors while appropriate actions against other defaulter companies are underway,” the report tells.

During the year, the Enforcement and Monitoring Division received applications from 36 listed companies to extend the minimum period of holding of AGMs. Extensions, under the rules, were allowed for varying periods, up to a maximum of 90 days to 33 companies.

Without seemingly to rob the credit that should be due to the Enforcement and Monitoring Division of the SECP in making companies compliant to the timely holding of AGMs, investors in listed companies complain of a couple of grievances which possibly remain unredressed. If AGMs of as many as 275 companies were due at the first quarter in June and 241 in September, most of those would surely have scheduled them in the last week of the month.

Such crowding of AGMs of scores of companies the same day and about the same time in the last few days of each quarter, makes it almost impossible for the shareholders with stakes in several companies to attend them all. They are left to make unhappy choices; attend some, skip others.

Secondly, companies are also permitted to hold AGMs at their registered offices, which often are the same as those of their mills’ site, located far from the cities. Few small investors from Karachi—which incontrovertibly is the home of most of the investors in equities— could afford time and money to travel to SITE to attend the AGM and surely none, to venture as far out as Hatter, in NWFP.