KARACHI, May 21: Market is showing great deal of interest in the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Adamjee Insurance Company Limited scheduled to be held on May 29, at which 9 of the 19 contesting persons would be elected as directors to the Board.

The big question mark is whether the Mansha group, which is understood to be holding an official 38.5 per cent shares in Adamjee Insurance, would be able to wrest control of the Insurance giant. Adamjee--the largest insurance company in Pakistan-commands nearly 40 per cent share in the total non-life insurance business in the country.

The AGM is being held after a 16-month old stay against the holding of meeting was set aside by the Supreme Court of Pakistan on March 15, this year. Adamjee Insurance is battling the third hostile take over bid.

The first two failed attempts having been made by a local stock brokerage firm in 1999 and the other by a Lahore-based individual investors' group in 2000. While those previous attempts to take over the company control from sponsors failed, the threat this time could be real.

Mansha group, which arguably is the country's largest conglomerate with interests in cement, textiles and the group's flagship- the Muslim Commercial Bank- is understood to have prepared itself for the raid. But nothing is really quite clear.

A notice in the press on Friday, posted names of 19 persons who had filed nominations for a place on the nine-member Board of directors. These include: Mohammad Hanif Adamjee; Abdul Hamid Adamjee; Abdul Razak Adamjee; Abdul Gaffar Adamjee; Iqbal Adamjee; Zahid Hamid Adamjee; Ibrahim Shamsi; Syed Jawad Gillani; Manzar Mushtaq; Haroun Rashid; Muhammad Saeed; Saqib Elahi; Shahzad Saleem; Burhan Muhammad Khan; Mohammad Naeem Mukhtar; Raziuddin Sheikh; Farid Noor Ali Fazal; Tariq Sayeed Saigol and Mohammed Choudhury.

The 38.5 per cent shareholding in the hands of the Mansha group comprise 29.5 per cent stake by the group-controlled Muslim Commercial Bank and 9 per cent owned indirectly: 4 per cent through MCB Employees Provident Fund and 5 per cent by MCB Employees Pension Fund.

If the corporate raiders succeed in wresting the control of Adamjee Insurance at the AGM on May 29 it would go down in history as the first ever takeover of a huge company in Pakistan.

Now trading at around Rs94, the share in Adamjee Insurance has multiplied almost five times since the low of Rs20, that it touched a couple of months before the beginning of current bull run in 2002.

Market makers differ on whether the stock is genuinely its worth, or the price flare up has more to do with the battle between the contesting groups to accumulate the floating stock.

Annual accounts of Adamjee Insurance released early this month showed local individuals in command of 20.6 million of the total 62.5 million shares in the company. That measured to 33 per cent of the total outstanding stock. It is for these that the contesting parties are believed to be engaged in an intense "proxy war".

For the year ended December 31, 2003, Adamjee Insurance posted after-tax profit amounting to Rs392 million and net premium revenue of Rs3.186 billion, both of them appear to be the highest in at least the last ten years.

The company holds Rs1.5 billion in equity and Rs7 billion in total assets. The board has proposed stock bonus at 15 per cent (three-for-twenty shares held) for the year 2003.