KARACHI, May 21: As many as 25 candidates are to contest for 15 seats on the board of directors of Pakistan Industrial Credit & Investment Corporation Limited (PICIC). Elections for three year term are scheduled to be held at an Extraordinary General meeting on May 29.
An announcement by PICIC lists the 25 who have notified their intention to offer themselves for elections: Ahsan Bashir, Gul Nawaz, Hasan Aziz Bilgrami, Iqbal Jafar, Jahangir Siddiqui, Javed A. Callea, Javed Omer Vohra, Kamal Afsar, Khalid Bashir, Khursheed K. Marker, M.Iqbal Kasbati, Mahmood Ahmed, Manzurul Haq, Mohammed Basheer Janmohammed, Mohammad Yasin Lakhani, Nadeem Maqbool, Rasool Bakhsh Baloch, Roohi R. Khan, Sadruddin, Saeed Jamal Tariq, Samina Hamid Khan, Sheikh M. Rafiq Akhtar, Tariq Iqbal Khan, Taufique Habib and Zahid Bashir.
Four members on the sitting board of 14 members who are not on the list of contestants include: Katsuaki Endo (representing Japanese shareholders), Mirza Ghazanfar Baig (representing federal government) and Muhammad Latif.
But conspicuous by its absence is the name of Muhammad Ali Khoja, the managing director of the corporation since July 1996. Khoja could not immediately be reached for comments but a corporate analyst observed that it is possible for the board to appoint or retain a non-member as company MD later on.
PICIC claims to be the largest private sector development finance institution with an equity of Rs1.9 billion—that it says is set to cross Rs2 billion by the end of June this year.
A recently released statement showed the Corporation posting an after-tax profit of Rs213 million for the nine months to end- March 2002.
The Corporation also claims to be the only development finance institution, at present, that is providing long-term financing. On February 26, last year, PICIC had acquired 60 per cent shares with management control of the former Gulf Commercial Bank Limited and converted it into PICIC Commercial Bank Limited.
PICIC is one of the four prospective bidders for controlling stake in NIT (Pakistan’s largest mutual fund with 20 billion in assets). Other three in the run are: ABAMCO, Arif Habib Securities and the First Habib Modaraba.