Alhaj Textile gets three new independent directors

The securities regulator has appointed three new independent directors at the publicly listed Alhaj Textile Mills Limited.

Also, the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC) has withdrawn two independent directors who were appointed at the company's board earlier. 

The new directors appointed are: Lt Colonel (LPR) AKM Saiful Bahar, Dr Sadia Noor Khan, associate professor at University of Dhaka, and Mafiz Uddin Ahmed, additional secretary of the finance ministry. 

The ones being withdrawn are Md Salim, faculty member of Bangladesh Academy for Securities Market, and Fahmid Wasik Ali, country CFO of Novartis, Bangladesh. 

In the mid-2019, Alhaj Textile decided to shut down the factory following its failure to sell products. 

After that, the company turned losses for the last two years and abstained from paying any dividend to the shareholders.

To revive the listed firm, the BSEC has restructured the board of Alhaj Textile. After that, the company returned to operations in June 2021. 

Amid internal conflicts among the directors from the sponsor family, the company's board, under the chairmanship of independent director Khondoker Kamaluzzaman, went divided earlier this year.

Later, BSEC withdrew Kamaluzzaman from the board and appointed other independent directors. 

In May this year, the board terminated its Managing Director (MD) and CEO Md Mizanur Rahman and replaced him with his cousin Md Bakhtertiar Rahman, another shareholder director of the oldest textile company in the bourse.

But for providing false information to the bourses, the BSEC decided to take action against Md Bakhtertiar Rahman. 

The regulator also decided to take action against the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) official responsible for posting false information about Alhaj Textile's board reform on the DSE website without verifying.  

According to BSEC sources, Alhaj's MD has violated a number of laws and provided misinformation about the company.