Khairul Bashar Abu Taher appointed as new CRO at Dhaka bourse

The Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) appointed investment banker Khairul Bashar Abu Taher Mohammad, also a former official of the securities regulator, as its new Chief Regulatory Officer (CRO).

The Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC), on Wednesday, approved the bourse's decision to appoint him as the new CRO.

CRO leads the regulatory affairs division of the bourses. Surveillance, monitoring and compliance, investigation and enforcement, listing affairs, investor complaints arbitration and litigation, corporate governance, and financial reporting compliance departments are under the regulatory affairs division of the DSE.

Currently, Khairul Bashar is the chief executive officer of merchant bank MTB Capital.

Graduating in Finance from the University of Dhaka in the early 1990s, Bashar began his career at Standard Chartered in corporate banking. Following his MBA from the University of Hull, UK, he joined the then Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as a deputy director in 1998.

As a deputy director in the regulator's registration department, he led the processes for license wise breakdown of the state-owned Investment Corporation of Bangladesh, registration process of broker-dealers, merchant banking wings of commercial banks, pioneering credit rating agencies in the country, and the first private sector asset management entity in the country.

In 2001, Bashar left for Canada to work for TD Bank Financial Group there. During leading the Mutual Fund Operations team at TD he achieved a Canadian postgraduate diploma in Financial Services Compliance Administration and the Canadian Securities Institute license for selling financial products.

In 2010, he returned home to serve EC Securities as the chief operations officer. The next year, Bashar became the founding CEO of the merchant banking wing of the Mutual Trust Bank.

MTB Capital, as a full-fledged merchant bank, led the industry in issue management services to SME companies to be listed in the SME platforms of the bourses.

Bashar also led the Bangladesh Merchant Bankers Association as its Secretary-General for four years in the late 2010s.

The DSE has been running with an in-charge CRO since November following the resignation of cost and management accountant Md Shawkat Jahan Khan within a short period of two months from his appointment as the DSE CRO.