DHAKA, June 8: Dhaka stocks closed slightly lower on Saturday following an announcement by Fu-Wang, a leading ceramic tiles manufacturer, that it will offer a huge chunk of shares for sale, brokers said.

They said the market opened in a positive trend in the morning but started to fall when Fu-Wang Ceramic announced it would sell 80,000 scrips of the company with in a month, DSE officials said.

Fu-Wang officials were not immediately available for comment.

The Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) benchmark index dropped 3.45 points or 0.45 percent to 753.57. Losers outnumbered gainers by 104 to 34 with 19 remaining unchanged.

The DSE-20 index for selected blue chips also fell 2.79 points or 0.31 percent to 922.05.

The market opened in positive notion but the sale announcement has pulled down both the indices, said Abul Kalam Azad of SAR Securities, a private brokerage firm.

Fu-Wang Ceramic shed 6.34 per cent to 107.00 taka on 84,500 shares valued at $0.15 million.

South East Bank Limited, a leading private sector bank gained 3.12pc to 354.50 taka

on 97,900 shares valued at $0.59 million.

Saturday’s overall turnover totalled $1.51 million up $0.37 million from the previous trading session on Thursday.

Some 2.02m shares were traded on the day against 1.66m shares in the previous session.—Reuters