KARACHI, May 25: The elections to the board of directors of PICIC have come under corporate flashlight.

The PICIC’s own growing business and its ambitions are enough, to make one covet a seat in the boardroom. That a leading business family has fielded the largest number of candidates has aroused further interest in the corporate world.

One estimate is that the family members and different companies run by them have put up 11 of the 25 candidates for as many as 15 seats.

The contestants include the nominees of the NIT, PIC and SLIC and officially supported private sector candidates and independents.

Although the majority of the paid-up capital of the corporation has been subscribed by the private sector, the public sector organizations, as a bloc, have the largest shareholding estimated at 44-48 per cent.

The chief executive of the company is formally elected by the board of directors whose current strength is 18, with the government having the final say. A joint secretary of the ministry has a permanent seat. Japanese shareholders, with 4.37 per cent stakes, have a director on the board. The total shareholding of the foreigners is 9.15 per cent.

The focus the corporate world is, however, on the family, which has fielded the highest number of candidates, all of whom do not chance to win on the “inhouse” voting strength. They should be banking on the support from the three public sector organizations, independents and individual shareholders.

SLIC, NIT and PIC have fielded four of their own nominees and may support 3-4 candidates from the private sector on the basis of their sharing holding.

SLIC, which is the largest single stakeholder with nearly 14 million shares, has put a single candidate, when it could perhaps field 2-3, says a shareholder.

With stakes holding reckoned at 22-24 per cent, the leading private sector group is stated to be in a position to field successfully four candidates.

Some people do not rule out the possibility that one or two candidates from the group could be elected with support of the government, independents and individuals. Traditionally, SLIC, NIT and PIC have put up six of their own nominees and supported PICIC Chairman Jamshed Marker. How successful would the group be in mobilizing support of the independents/individuals is anybody’s guess.

Incidentally, two candidates are out of contest. Mahmud Ahmed has withdrawn and Sadruddin has suffered a technical knockout.

Eleven candidates, directors and top executives, are on the company’s board or work for Crescent Investment Bank, Crescent Leasing Company, Crescent Textiles, Trust Bank, Shakarganj Mills, Suraj Cotton Mills and Pilcorp run by Crescent group and one of the country’s leading industrial families. They are Ahsan Bashir, Gul Nawaz, Javed A. Callea, Khalid Bashir, Manzoorul Haque, Nadeem Maqbool, Roohi R. Khan, Zahid Bashir, Samina Hamid Khan, Saeed Jamal Tariq and Javed Omar Vohra.

The financial institutions have nominated four candidates, representing their organizations: NIT: Tariq Iqbal Khan and Hasan Aziz Bilgrami, PIC: Kamal Azfar,

SLIC: Rasul Baksh Baluch. Others are mostly independents, two of whom, Jahangir Siddiqui and Iqbal Jaffer, are stated to enjoy support of MCB and EFU. Other independents include Bashir Jan Mohammad, M. Iqbal Kasbati, Sheikh M. Rafiq and Taufiq Habib.