The public shareholders of National Hydropower Company (NHCL) have questioned the regulatory capability of the regulators for failing to penalise the company for its repeated disregard to regulations.
“If NHCL fails to hold its annual general meeting (AGM) once again on July 1, and if regulators again do not take stringent action against the board then we can assume that they are not powerful enough to safeguard investors’ money,” a director at NHCL Deepak Karki, who was elected by public shareholders, said during an interaction programme organised by the pressure group of NHCL’s investors, today. NHCL, which has not held its AGM for last two fiscal years, has once again postponed the meeting, which was supposed to be held today, to July 1.
NHCL’s notice says it will hold both the 14th and 15th AGMs together on that day. Investors including two public directors at NHCL’s board had been asking the Company Registrar’s Office (CRO) and Securities Board of Nepal (Sebon) to make the company hold its AGM.
They also blamed NHCL for taking decisions unilaterally, blaming its chairman Pradip Man Vaidya along with NB Group.
National Hydropower Company, promoted by NB Group, has 13,863,462 unit shares listed at Nepse with 10 million units owned by 6000 minority shareholders. NB Group holds 20 per cent stake in the company.
Investors had sought CRO’s help to call for a Special General Meeting last August. After the company failed to hold the meeting, CRO asked NHCL to hold its AGM by the end of September 2011 which the company failed to conduct.
Then in March, investors asked Sebon to call for an AGM. Sebon had directed NHCL to hold its AGM by mid-April but it accepted NHCL’s decision to postpone it to June 7. It has once again postponed the AGM.
