KARACHI, Jan 5: Names for nominations to the Board of Directors of the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) as non-member directors had been received by the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) and everything currently was under a “consultative process”, Commissioner Securities at SECP, Shahid Ghaffar told Dawn on Saturday.

He strongly refuted reports of any “rejections”, saying that all names proposed to the Regulator were of people who enjoyed highest respect in their respective fields; may they be corporate executives; technocrats; lawyers or from other professions. “All that the Commission is doing is to consider who among them would be able to devote the greatest amount of time”. That, he said, was important for the board would have to continuously monitor the consolidation phase of the market reforms programme during the year.

Under the foremost of the Asian Development Bank’s capital market reforms programme, seven ‘outside’ directors and an independent managing director now sit on the KSE board. Nominations for the year 2002 are currently being made by the KSE to the SECP, which must first approve the same.

In a separate press statement, the Commission clarified certain matters regarding the preparation and transmission of quarterly accounts. Briefly, these provide: (i) companies that are able to circulate their Audited (annual) accounts within three months of the close of their financial year, need not circulate fourth quarter accounts; (2) as a special case, and only in respect of the quarter ended December 31, 2001, companies may circulate their quarterly accounts by February 28, 2002—instead of January 31, 2002 (3) Companies facing difficulty in circulation of quarterly accounts to shareholders, may in lieu thereof, publish quarterly accounts in two leading daily newspapers, one in English and the other in Urdu, having wide circulation in the Province in which the stock exchange on which the company is listed, is situated (4) Notwithstanding the above, quarterly accounts must be submitted to the Commission, the Registrar and the concerned stock exchanges.