{"id":153945,"date":"2025-12-31T17:41:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T00:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=153945"},"modified":"2025-12-31T17:41:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T00:41:09","slug":"a-full-circle-at-colombo-dockyard-colombo-dockyards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2025\/12\/31\/a-full-circle-at-colombo-dockyard-colombo-dockyards\/","title":{"rendered":"A Full Circle at Colombo Dockyard Colombo Dockyard\u2019s"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Dr Sarath Obeysekera<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>Colombo Dockyard\u2019s majority shareholder, Onomichi Dockyard of Japan, recently divested 51% of its shares to an Indian shipyard.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The transaction, I am informed, was carefully structured by Sri Lankan legal and financial professionals, without ministerial influence.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The final stage is now underway, with additional shares being issued to existing shareholders. This development brought back memories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;At the time of privatization, the Government had offered 10% of the shares to the Dockyard workers. However, when&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I took over the Shipyard under Japanese management, more than a year after privatization, those shares had still not been released.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;I personally met the then Interim President, the late D. B. Wijetunga, and persuaded him to ensure the release of the shares that were being held by banks and other entities.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When the matter was finally resolved, I had the privilege of handing over the share certificates to the workers myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;It remains one of the moments I am most proud of. Today, nearly 25 years later, I visited the Central Depository System (CDS) to make payment and apply for additional shares under the new investor\u2019s offer.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There, I met a retired Colombo Dockyard employee\u2014one of those very workers\u2014struggling to understand how to register with a stockbroker.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;Without hesitation, I offered to help. I called a stockbroker I knew and arranged assistance for him.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;As I watched him leave, I remembered the day I handed him his original share certificate all those years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;It felt like a full circle.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;And I returned home quietly happy\u2014knowing that even in small ways, doing the right thing endures longer than titles, transactions, or ownership changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Regards<br><br>Dr Sarath Obeysekera<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr Sarath Obeysekera Colombo Dockyard\u2019s majority shareholder, Onomichi Dockyard of Japan, recently divested 51% of its shares to an Indian shipyard.&nbsp; The transaction, I am informed, was carefully structured by Sri Lankan legal and financial professionals, without ministerial influence.&nbsp; The final stage is now underway, with additional shares being issued to existing shareholders. This development [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-153945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dr-sarath-obeysekera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153945"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":153946,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153945\/revisions\/153946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}