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          The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has asked the managing director of Premier Bank Ltd to send particulars and photos of six officials of the third generation private commercial bank (PCB) to the office of the stock market regulatory body within tomorrow (Monday).
"We sent a letter to the Premier Bank Saturday as we need detailed information about these officials relating to opening of fake beneficiary owners' (BO) accounts in relations with the floatation of primary shares by the PCB," a source of the SEC told this correspondent.
The officials are executive vice president Abdul Hai, Banani branch manager Syed Nawsher Ali, Motijheel branch manager Anwar Latif, Banani branch officers Shafiul Azam, Momtazul Huq and Kazi Iftekhar Hossain.
The bank's IPO subscription was scheduled to begin on February 22 but the SEC suspended the subscription process on February 12 on charge of massive irregularities in the share floatation process. The SEC also formed an investigation team to probe the irregularities.
"We have information that as many as 15,000 BO accounts were opened using a single address recently and no doubt, this is a gross unethical practice," one SEC executive told this correspondent.
According to market sources, as many as 312,000 of BO accounts have been opened with the Central Depository Bangladesh Ltd (CDBL) ahead of suspension of the Premiere Bank's IPO subscription.
The investors were rushing in to open BO accounts to get hold of at least one market lot of new issues.
The size of the IPO (Tk 550 million) of the Premiere Bank was the highest in the banking sector.
As per the present IPO rules, at least 111,510 applications was eligible to participate in the Premiere's IPO for 55,75,497 shares.
The SEC has introduced new IPO rule under which preferences are given to small investors applying for a minimum market lot of 50 shares.
The changed rules came into force with the public float of Exim Bank Ltd last year (2004).
The stock markets had been greeting the public float of banks overwhelmingly.
In 2003 and 2004, the IPOs of banks were oversubscribed by 21.9 times on an average.
Third generation PCBs-Mutual Trust Bank Ltd, Standard Bank, One Bank, Bank Asia, Mercantile Bank and Exim Bank floated primary shares in 2003 and 2004.