The Securities & Investment Institute (SII) is for the first time ever launching its suite of qualifications in Pakistan. The SII, the membership body for those who work in the securities and investment industry, has launched its Education Programme for the Capital Markets with the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) as part of the KSE's Education Programme for their Capital Market Participants. Taster training sessions were made available recently, run by one of the SII's Accredited Training Providers, the College of Accounting and Management Sciences (CAMS) in Karachi. The launch follows a series of roadshows and presentations to leading broking, investment houses, banks and universities which the SII has been offering over the past month with CAMS and its other training providers, USM and IFIS. The SII's accredited training providers in Pakistan have begun offering face-to-face training courses to the Capital Markets for the SII's Risk Management, Certificates in Securi...

KARACHI: Structured Solutions (SS) has agreed to cooperate with the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) in marketing Pakistani indices outside the country. Structured Solutions will market KSE indices abroad, especially in Western Europe, to find potential licensees who are willing to launch structured products, ETFs (exchange-traded funds) and other financial products, stated a KSE statement issued here on Tuesday. The cooperation is based on marketing of existing indices calculated by the KSE and Index Development, and marketing of new indices which will be tailor-made for investment banks to launch structured products and other financial instruments. Structured Solutions AG is a leading consulting company in the structured product business in Germany and Western Europe. It provides structured products for institutional investors and has a joint venture with Boerse Stuttgart AG, one of the largest derivative trading platforms, concerning the index platform S-BOX.

By Muhammad Yasir KARACHI: The prolong gloom and doom at the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) has wiped out government’s revenue by around 87 percent at the end of first half of 2008-09 compared to the same period of previous fiscal year. According to the data made available to Daily Times, the Regional Tax Office (RTO) Karachi has witnessed sharp decline in tax collection from equity market on direct tax accounts. The overall tax generation stood Rs 241.866 million in 1HFY09 as compared with Rs 2.010 billion tax revenues collected in 1FY08 by RTO Karachi. The tax collection on the account of Withholding Tax (WHT) has been Rs 152.284 million during July-December 2008. RTO has received around Rs 1.045 billion taxes under the same account and in the corresponding period last fiscal, showing 85 percent reduction year-on-year basis. Only in December 2008, the same tax has been recorded Rs 217.146 million as compared with Rs 1.078 million in the same month of previous year, depicting almost 100...

ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly Standing Committee on Finance and Revenue on Monday approved the Stock Exchanges (Corporatisation, Demutualisation and Integration) Bill, 2008. The representatives of nationwide bourses and small investors, who also turned up at the meeting, supported the government for early enactment of the bill. Karachi’s stock exchange was represented by Kamran Y Mirza, Adnan Afridi, Yaseen Lakhani and Zafar Moti, Lahore’s by Arif Saeed and Islamabad’s by Rashid Chughtai. Fauzia Wahab chaired the meeting. Earlier, an official of Security Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) briefed the committee on the bill. He said demutualisation would separate ownership from trading rights and improve governance by reducing malpractices. The official said the bill’s enactment would turn stock exchanges into public limited companies by shares and not by guarantees. He said members wouldn’t keep more than 40 percent shares, while the remaining ones would be sold to general public...

KARACHI, Jan 26 (Reuters) - State-run Pakistan Petroleum Ltd. ( PPL.KA ) (PPL) reported a 48.2 percent jump in net profit for the first half to Dec. 31, fuelled by higher gas and crude oil prices and increased sales but the profit came below market estimates. PPL, which operates Pakistan's largest gas field, posted a net profit of 13.77 billion rupees ($174.3 million) against 9.29 billion rupees a year ago, it said in a statement to the Karachi Stock Exchange on Monday. The stock fell 5 percent. "The increase in its earnings was due to higher oil and gas well-head prices and higher other income earned," said Farhan Mahmood, an analyst at JS Global Capital Ltd. Net sales in the first half jumped 40 percent to 29.6 billion rupees from 21.16 billion rupees a year ago. The company's other income including from investments rose to 2.27 billion rupees from 1.19 billion rupees. The net profit was below analysts' forecasts which ranged from 13.98 billion rupees to 14.895 ...

Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) has convened a meeting of all the three stock exchanges of the country for next week. SECP officials told Geo News that matters including the present situation of the bourses, financing mechanisms and futures will come under discussion at the joint meeting of the bourses. It will be the first meeting of the Acting Chairman SECP Salman Sheikh with the officials of the three stock exchanges.

Bearish trend in Karachi Stock Exchange remained intact the whole business week including the last day Friday when bourse shed further 1.185 per cent following the selling of shares from foreign as well as local investors eventually sending the bourse below the level of 4-year level. The Karachi Stock Exchange’s benchmark KSE-100 index shed 91.17 points to close at 4,929.54 points. Volume remained at 92.191 million shares slight down of Thursday 92.330 shares but far less than the average over 250 million traded daily last year. The market open Friday with negative note and this trend prevailed in both two sessions and broke the psychological barrier of 4,000 points while once the market sank to over 115 points. However, the bourse at the end of the session recovered somewhat but remained negative. While NIT head dispelling the impression said that full amount of Rs20 billion fund which was set for rescuing KSE out of crisis, has now been received and the fund is buying all the eight s...