Thursday, November 03, 2005

update : court interference temporarily saves combank's amarasuriya

last minute stay order from appeals court (after district court refused one in the morning) preventing harry j's cos from voting(till nov 16) at extraordinary general meeting of shareholders saved combank chairman.

I bloged about the issue earlier.

more details on todays happenings can be found here. though i must say lanka business online and it's tv programs are covering this in a totally one sided way (very unusually for them). though lbo is generally pro market and rational in covering issues, they seems to have got carried away with this, giving no reason for their open preference for one side. btw minority share holders were not relevant to today's events, lbo story made a mistake there.

anyway given that central bank and securities and exchange commission have already held that banking laws were not broken, it is hard to think that this stay order being anything more than a temporary respite for mjc amarasuriya.

shareholders will and should get their way eventually, in spite of irrational courts, unions and small number of crazy minority shareholders. otherwise there is no point in having limited liability public companies.

8 comments:

Keshi said...

Hey Sitting u went to school in SL?

Keshi.

Keshi said...

Sorry for asking too personal questions here...hehe..u dun have to answer :)

Keshi.

Niroshan said...

This whole thing will now boil down to the interpretation of the Law. See, the reason why the Central Bank and the Securities and Exchange Commission are saying that Harry J and the parties are not violating the Law, is because these shareholders became the owners of such shares before the law of 10% was passed. It's a valid argument. But then again it could be argued that once a new law is brought in, for whatever reason, it will supersede the existing law. In which case Harry J and the parties acting in concert are, actually violating the Law. It's a tricky situation full of ambiguities. What will happen next is anybody's guess.

sittingnut said...

keshi
yes, i did go to school in sl. np about personal questions only i (as you said) may not answer some of them.

niroshan:
you may have a point that it has become a question of law. the problem is this is not the only such instance and there are lot of other such holdings in other banks and in some cases without them the banks would not last. besides do you want these holdings to be dumped in the market? haha that would be funny. fact is this whole shareholder limit is stupid and the central bank is right to interpret it in a flexible way.

most ppl oppose jayawardana because he is not one of the so called elite and they don't like his guts. well these ppl should know that this is now a free market economy and you will see more such ppl in the future.
imo it is good that ppl like amarasuriya who got to the top mainly because of his connections should have to live in fear of their job henceforth.

Keshi said...

oh ok thanks :)

Keshi.

sittingnut said...

ashanthi:
glad you are back and ok.

as for elite, i don't think in a truly free market system present sri lankan elite can last long.

sittingnut said...

don't worry we are getting there. imo we are three quarters of the way there and there won't be any turning back.

Keshi said...

Manipulation is the biggest quality in Sri Lankan politics...sad but true...

Keshi.