SHARE ISSUE: Give everybody a fair shake

2009/11/05

H.Y. CHEW, Muar

IT is indeed heartening to note that the government is bringing the 1Malaysia concept to all levels of society. But it cannot be seen in the new share applications.

We can understand that the government is trying to uplift the standard of Bumiputeras in the economic and financial sectors.

Towards this end, in every public share issue, a big portion of the shares is given to Bumiputera institutions and cooperatives as well as Bumiputera companies.

However, in two recent cases, it has been observed that the public issues of shares (in the case of TA Global) were totally restricted to Bumiputera individuals to apply; there was no chance at all for non-Bumiputeras.

In another case -- the Muar Ban Lee Engineering public issue -- Bumiputera individuals were allotted all the shares they had applied for while the non-Bumiputeras had a slim chance of being successful.