SEC after Perpetual Treasuries’ “spoils”
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is probing some trades that under-fire Perpetual Treasuries PLC had done during 2009 to 2015, informed sources say.
This is in a bid to ascertain whether there was any price-pushing and dumping the shares on the Employees Provident Fund (EPF), they told the Business Times. The Perpetual Group has been in a media blitzkrieg owing to the infamous ‘bond scam’ which saw Foreign Minister and former Minister of Finance Ravi Karunanayake resigning on Thursday.
Thurston Investments, connected to Perpetual Group had a 14 per cent stake as at 31 December 2016 in HDFC and many trades through this company also happened which the regulator is scrutinising, a source said noting that the Central Finance, Ceylon Grain Elevators and LOLC were questionable transactions by Perpetual Treasuries.
Perpetual Treasuries and Perpetual Equities held 6.52 per cent of NDB as at 31 March 2017, i.e. 11.2 million NDB shares. The stake that Perpetual has in NDB (during 4Q2016 it increased the holding to 7,352,180 shares which is 4.45 per cent of the bank – from 6,153,686 shares as at 30 September 2016) was bought by them after the bond issue surfaced in 2015.