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The country's capital market authorities are now examining the guidelines for floating primary shares in various countries with a view to preparing a fresh guideline for primary shares.
The move has been taken to encourage local, foreign and joint venture companies to go public.
Sources said top officials of the capital market watchdog along with two bourses the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) and Chittagong Stock Exchange (CSE) will be flying to India December next to see how the method of initial public offerings (IPOs) work there.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) earlier agreed in principle to introduce the 'book building' mechanism, which is practiced globally except India, in floating IPOs by the financially sound business enterprises.
"But as the Bangladesh's capital market is yet to get enough maturity and professionalism the authorities concerned are now sceptical of introducing the 'book building' method," a senior DSE member said.
Under the globally practiced 'book building' method, underwriters buy all the shares to be floated by business enterprises into the stock markets through competitive bidding procedure.
Underwriters then choose some seller groups or brokers to put up those shares for sell to the retail investors.
The share issuing companies get the prices of their stocks from the underwriter who would be the highest bidder in the bidding procedure.
Unlike the existing IPO allotment system in the country, no lottery will be held for selecting the shareholders under the book building regulation, market sources said.
But as per the Indian IPO floatation method, the share issuing company declares a range of prices to determine their stock prices and seek quotations of share price from the interested investors.
The issuers then fix up a 'clearing price' of their shares considering a number of aspects and issue shares to the qualified investors, said sources.
"If the clearing price is higher than the price quoted by an investor he would not be entitled to get allotment of shares but if it is lower than the quoted price of an investor he would not get allotment of shares," said sources.
The proposed 'book-building' method for floating primary shares is, however, is now the much talked about issue among all the stock market investors, market players and the stakeholders of the country's both the bourses.
The general investors are opposing the 'book building' method strongly.
"The SEC can approve high premium with the share prices of reputed companies to attract them floating IPOs under the prevailing system of floating primary shares in place of introducing book building system," one small investor Faruque Ahmed told the FE.
He cited the examples of Square Pharma and Berger Paints where the commission approved high premiums with their share prices for floating IPOs.
Fearing ill-motivated syndication by underwriters in the proposed 'book building' method another stock market player argued that the shares of the issuers should be sold in a proportionate way among the underwriters, general investors, non-resident Bangladeshis (NRBs) and mutual fund holders.
There should be a proportion like - underwriters would purchase 40 per cent shares, general investors, NRBs and mutual fund holders would purchase 10 per cent shares each, he added.
Regarding the proposed 'book building' method the Convenor of the SEC Consultative Committee Mansur Ahmed, however, said that the stock exchange brokerage houses might also play the role in place of underwriters and take part in the bidding to purchase shares of issuing companies.
"The commission would fix up the criteria to select the qualified stock exchange brokerage houses to take part in the bidding," he added.
He also said that initially the existing IPO system and the new 'book building' system might run in parallel.
The commission is now fixing the criteria to determine which company deserves the book building system to float IPOs at the initial level, he added.
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