Shareholders want CIAL stocks listed

The annual general meeting held on Tuesd-ay at the Fine Arts Hall here failed to take a decision in this regard with the director board not proposing the same while Chief Minister

Oommen Chandy asked CIAL managing director V.J. Kurien to explore the possibility and verify the technical and legal issues and report back.

After the address by Mr Chandy, CIAL chairman, the small shareholders pitched for stock market listing while some of them sought the issue of 10 percent shares each to minority shareholders from the shares held by the government and majority shareholders.

However, the Chief Minister pointed out that the company law did not allow issuing shares to minority shareholders alone.

Following this, a minority shareholder demanded that the majority shareholders should show the magnanimity not to touch such shares offloaded when it is offered in a common pool.

However, this did not find favour with major shareholder Mr M.A. Yousufali who said that the rights of all shareholders were the same.

He also exhorted the shareholders not to be in a hurry to offload their shares and book profit now as the CIAL shares are invaluable assets which they can hand down to future generations.

Some of the minority shareholders also protested against adding a premium of Rs 40 on each share now being issued on a 1:4 ratio. They said that the company should not rake in money in this manner.

However, it was not accepted as the previous AGM had taken a decision unanimously in this regard.

The AGM also accepted the decision of the director board of the company to declare a dividend of 21 percent for the shareholders.

With this, the total dividend distributed by the company so far has become 153 percent.

The total turnover of the company registered an increase of 19.69 percent this year, going up to Rs 413.96 crore while profit went up by 16.25 percent to Rs 144.58 crore.