KATHMANDU, May 7: The allotment of the FPO of Standard Chartered Bank Nepal Ltd (SCBNL) has been delayed. 

NMB Capital Ltd -- the issue manager of the FPO -- has said that the delay was mainly due to the ‘unexpected errors at the final hours’ on the applications made through Applications Supported by Blocked Amount (ASBA). 

Though securities allotment guidelines require issue manager to complete allotment within 60 days, the Sebon had instructed NMB Capital to allot shares to applicants within 50 days, or by last Friday, after considering the liquidity situation in the market and the enforcement of the ASBA system that was expected to shorten the FPO process.  

“As ASBA application was being exercised for the first time by a large number of institutions, some unexpected errors were reported during the final hours which demanded more time for cross verification,” Shreejesh Ghimire, the CEO of NMB Capital Ltd, said.

 “We could have disqualified a large number of investors. But we also realized that it would not be good to penalize them. Banks participating for the first time are also not to be blamed as the reporting errors were realized after physical entries only,” he added, saying that they could ‘not do the allotment haphazardly upon noting the errors that can be corrected upon reviewing.’

As the technical issues have already been resolved, we will complete the allotment process once the regulator gives us the go-ahead, he added. 

Niranjaya Ghimire, deputy spokesperson of the Sebon, told Republica that the capital market regulator was looking into the merit of the reasons provided by the NMB Capital Ltd.

 
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