BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS

Last Sunday Island (17.02.2019) reported that two new directors appointed to Colombo Stock Exchange Board.  The new directors were Mr. Dimuthu Sanjaya Abeysekera, who is CEO of Asha Philips Securities, which is affiliated to Philip Capital Singapore and a director of Asha Financial Services Ltd. This director is directly associated with the market operations of the Stock Exchange.  The other direct appointed was Mr. Mutaza Jafferjee, who is the chairman of JB Securities and serves in the Board of Nations Trust Bank. Both firms are market operators of the Colombo Stock Exchange.

Colombo Stock Exchange is regulator and administrator of stock transactions in Sri Lanka. In other countries especially in Western Countries market operators will not appoint to the regulators’ board as it is a clear violation of the disciplines of regulator and appointees must have rejected the appointment, if they educated and experienced people on stock market operation, they should have done so without harming and creating risk to investment in Sri Lanka.  Why did these market operators appoint to the regulatory authority?  Was there some dishonest motivation behind these appointments?

I see that the appointment and accepting the appoints were wrong.  After Central Bank bond scam, the government has not learned a lesson. What did the opposition, Committees of the parliament, Transparency International do this type of undemocratic and dishonest work was going on.

Sri Lanka needs attracting foreign and domestic investments, which are channeled through Colombo Stock Exchange and if the stock exchange administrators have a conflict of interest, investors could not trust the dealing and it might create additional risk to investors.

In the 1990s, Chairman of Bank of Ceylon appointed as Chairman of the Colombo Stock Exchange and I wrote to the President about the conflict of interest and my suggestion was acknowledged by the president and the secretary of the president wrote back to me thank my points.