Ahsan Habib

Abdul Mannan, a stock investor who maintains two beneficiary owner’s accounts, has been incurring losses on all counts for the last six months as the stock indices were plumbing new depths every day amid a fund crisis and a confidence deficit in the market.

IDLC Finance, a listed non-bank financial institution, took another hit to its profit last year thanks to the bearish stock market and volatile money market.

Delta Brac Housing Finance Corporation, or DBH, one of the leading listed non-bank financial institutions, logged in higher profits last year though its interest income dropped.

GSK Bangladesh’s profits surged in 2019 even though the British multinational saw a decline in turnover thanks to the relief from incurring losses from its pharma unit.

Big business groups have turned to e-commerce and home delivery to head off a collapse in sales amid the countrywide movement control order.

Grameenphone’s net profits soared 25.8 per cent year-on-year to Tk 1,070 crore in the first quarter of the year driven by data revenue and cost-efficient programmes despite operating an increasingly challenging environment.

Hardly anyone turns up at the National Parliament House these days to get some fresh in the evenings.

In a first for Bangladesh, listed companies are using virtual platforms to hold annual general meetings as part of their business continuity plans while avoiding mass gatherings and maintain social distancing in the face of coronavirus outbreak in the country.

In the fight against coronavirus, two important facets have come out to help protect against the highly contagious, lethal pathogen: hand hygiene and the hygiene of frequently touched surfaces.

The stock market regulator has no right to set the criteria for issuing new stock brokerage licences; rather, the bourses can exert their authority to do so as per the demutualisation rules, stock brokers said.

At the turn of the year, sweet makers were impatient for the month of April to arrive.

Since April 1, Farhana Nazira is having trouble sleeping.

With a heavy heart, dairy farmer Mohammad Rajib on Sunday emptied the pails of milk he got from his 14 cows into a manure pit.

Local pharmaceuticals have produced a drug called Favipiravir -- an anti-flu and viral infection medication -- said to be effective in the treatment of coronavirus patients in China.

Stocks delivered their worst first quarter of a year as nervous investors went for massive selloffs, initially prompted by anti-market measures and then by the fast-spreading coronavirus, which dealt a heavy blow to the economy and businesses at home and abroad.

The stock market regulator is set to award new licences for brokerage houses to any firms, including foreign ones, in order to attract more investors to the market.

The European Central Bank (ECB) has asked banks in the eurozone to not pay any dividend in order to boost their capacity to absorb losses that will invariably take place for the global coronavirus pandemic that has brought the world down on its knees.

Despite being hit by the fallout of the coronavirus, Bangladesh’s corporate giants are not sitting idle as they have joined the government’s efforts by enhancing supplies to the ill-equipped health sector and extending helping hand to the low-income people who are facing existential crisis because of the lockdown.

Globally, stock market investors are looking to cash out their shares. It’s the same here in Bangladesh -- except they are not finding any takers.

Junk and some over-valued stocks were the real winners of the capital market regulator’s move on Thursday to set a new floor price to thwart a meltdown in the bourse amid the heightened coronavirus fears.