Burqa it’s really funny to see people commenting on affairs for which they have no knowledge. Time has proven that privatization of banks in general and MCB in particular was the best thing done by our government.
During the privatization process of MCB Bank Tawakkal group was bidding against a group of 10 leading and Industrial groups of Pakistan. Tawakkal group was total fraud who used to thrive on collecting and distributing money Samad Dadabhoy style with no audit or known profitable business. On the other hand 10 leading industrial groups of Pakistan had a known management track record for years. Tawakkal incidentally was the highest bidder but the government of that time did not want to give this institution to fraud people like Tawakkal. There this group of 10 industrialist was asked to match the bid submitted by Tawakkal which they agreed to do. This procedure for privatization was later followed by all the subsequent governments where the best reputed group was always asked to match the highest bid. This was done to protect the institutions from going in to wrong hands.
At that time Mansha was just one of the 10 people in the group. Later over the years he bought the management shares in MCB at market price. The initial purchase of Mansha during the privatization was 1/10th of 25% share originally disinvested. Mansha over the years increased his share from less than 5% to over 42% mainly purchasing these shares at market price.
It may be noted that before the banks were privatized they used to give loans as political bribes and had huge NPLs (Non performing Loans). After privatization the NPLs are just a fraction of what they used to be. To give you an example, government had to inject 22 billlion rupees in UBL before privatization, to sell the bank for 14 billion to Al Nahayan/Bestway group. Same is the story with ABL and HBL which were sold to Sheikh Mukhtar group and Agha Khan respectively. There was no cash injection in MCB before privatization to compensate NPLs.
At the time of privatization the bank’s market capitalization was less than 5 billion rupees, which is over 500 billion rupees today. MCB is by far the best run and most profitable bank with least NPLs in Pakistan today. Mansha’s other businesses don’t owe a penny to MCB…
You have posted an 18 year old article… lot of water has passed under the bridges. You need to update yourself my friend…