ISLAMABAD: Seven nominations have been filed for three seats of shareholder directors at the board of Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX), on the last day to file their nominations, while four names have been submitted by the Chinese consortium for their nominations.

As the last day to file nominations ended on Thursday, nominations were filed by Abid Ali Habib, Ahmed Chinoy, Adil Ghaffar, Shehzad Chamdia, Humayyun Javed, Aftab Aziz and Ashraf Bawany as local shareholder directors in the PSX Board.

The election for the PSX board will be held on April 19, 2018 where seven directors will be elected, and it is expected that out of seven seats the Chinese consortium will be able to bag four slots while remaining three will be taken by local shareholders.

“The issue is that Chinese have block votes whereas we have divided mandate in terms of number of shares,” said one of the candidate.

With PSX having a share capital of 800 million shares, each candidate will require approximately 114m shares to become a director.

The PSX will evaluate these nominations in the light of different regulatory requirements as to the fit and proper criteria etc and will forward it to SECP for a formal approval.

The Section 159 of Companies Act, 2017, demands that PSX has to notify the names of eligible candidates not later than seven days before the date of election which, in this case, appears to be April 11, 2017.

However, after the elections the existing independent directors along with the new arrivals in the board will forward 14 names to the SECP for approval of seven names as independent directors.

Published in Dawn, April 6th, 2018