SECP chairman appointed

Muhammad Ali Ghulam Muhammad the new chairman of SECP, 3 new commissioners likely to be hired.

KARACHI: Muhammad Ali Ghulam Muhammad will assume responsibilities as the new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP), an official at the apex regulator told The Express Tribune on Friday.

“Arrangements for the new chairman to assume office have started and he will take charge next week,” said the official. He added that the appointment had been approved by the Prime Minister’s Secretariat.

The incoming chairman will be no stranger to the capital markets. In 1990, Muhammad received his Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) in Karachi after which he started his career with a brokerage firm owned by Indosuez. The company was eventually incorporated with Mashreq Bank and renamed Carr-Mashreq Securities.

In early 2002, the brokerage firm re-emerged as Elixir Securities under ownership of the Dawood Group – this time with Muhammad at the helm of affairs as the chief executive officer. He later became the primary owner of Fortune Securities.

The newly inducted chairman, however, has spent the majority of the past decade working and living abroad.

Market participants generally hold the newly inducted SECP chairman in high regard in terms of expertise and experience of local equities markets. The appointment will put an end to weeks of uncertainty regarding the succession to the top spot at the regulatory body, which ensued after the departure of Salman Sheikh one month ago.

Sheikh had been promoted from SECP commissioner to the top slot after his predecessor Raziur Rahman completed his term. The list of heads of SECP and its predecessor body includes HU Baig, Naik Mohammad Qureshi, Rahim Jan, Shamim Ahmed Khan, Khalid Mirza, Tariq Hassan, Raziur Rahman and Salman Sheikh.

Muhammad has assumed the top spot at a time when the country’s premier exchange is lagging behind in plans for demutualisation and is rife with internal conflicts with member and non-member directors squaring off.

Orders given by the SECP in this regard have recently been flouted by the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE). A letter issued on December 9 by the SECP to the KSE had termed the appointment of Haroon Askari as acting managing director of the exchange ‘a violation of regulations and not valid’.

Moreover, official sources have confirmed that to date, no reply has been submitted by the KSE to the apex regulator despite being directed to ‘explain the non-compliance with SECP directions’.

Of arrivals and departures

“The appointment of three new commissioners of the SECP is likely to take place within the next few days,” an SECP official confided to The Express Tribune but requested anonymity. The source asserted that Imtiaz Haider, Itrat Rizvi and Ashraf Muhammad Hayat are awaiting appointment as commissioners from the Prime Minister’s Secretariat.

Imtiaz Haider was formerly managing director of the Islamabad Stock Exchange (ISE) and has served as group head of AKD Securities. Itrat Rizvi had been serving as chief executive officer of the National Asset Management Company (Namco) and boasts 31 years of experience in banking, development financing and regulatory organisations. Before joining Namco, Rizvi had served as commissioner SECP. Ashraf Hayat has recently retired from the Planning Commission.

Meanwhile, two general managers of KSE have been relieved of their duties. According to an internal notification issued by the exchange, general manager of the audit department Fayaz Longhi was terminated from his position which has been declared ‘redundant’, while GM market control and surveillance Junaid Mirza has opted to ‘resign under duress’, according to a KSE official.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 25^th, 2010.