NRBC Bank’s listing makes sponsor shareholders billionaire

One sponsor shareholder of the NRB Commercial (NRBC) Bank has become a billionaire in just two months and three others are in the pipeline to become billionaires in a day or two if the share price continues to increase as it is happening for over a month.

A USA-based expatriate ABM Abdul Mannan, who holds 5.67 percent shares in the bank, is the lucky man as the value of his holdings stood at over Tk 111 crore on Sunday when the bank’s share price on the Dhaka Stock Exchange closed at Tk 30.80.

The share price of the bank skyrocketed more than 200 percent since its debut on March 22 this year. The NRBC Bank’s share price, which was Tk 12 on May 2, crossed Tk 30 in just three weeks.

According to the DSE data, the bank’s market value hit over Tk 1,967 crore from Tk 702 crore during the period, making Mannan a billionaire.

Three other sponsors — Chairman SM Parvez Tamal, Director Rafikul Islam Mia Arzoo and Mohammed Enayet Hossain — are on the list to become billionaires soon as each of them holds nearly 5 percent shares in the bank, according to the bank’s IPO prospectus.

But they cannot monetise the shares as there is three years embargo on the share sales of sponsors as per securities rules.

The share price spiral made some 55 sponsors’ stakes of 73.32 percent shares worth over Tk 1,442 crore, nearly three times higher than their pre-IPO level.

“There is nothing special behind this price rise,” Tamal, who is an expatriate living in Moscow, told the Business Insider Bangladesh.

“We are expanding and doing well for the past few years. Maybe, investors have taken the bank’s stocks as a lucrative investment.”

The bank posted a 53.84-percent rise in its third-quarter (January-March) earnings this year from Tk 0.286 in the same period a year earlier, it said in a filing with the prime bourse on Sunday.

Established in April 2013, it has 102 branches and 86 sub-branches, according to the bank’s website.