Bangladesh's Corporate World

Beximco Pharma, a leading drug maker in Bangladesh and a unit of business conglomerate Beximco Group, secured a $51.6 billion loan from Germany-based BHF-Bangk Aktiengesellshaft. A German export credit agency Euler Hermes will be the guarantor of the loan. Earlier, Bangladesh Investment Board approved Beximco Pharma’s proposal to raise funds to utilize in new plant as well as machinery purchasing. The interest rate of that loan will be lower than that of local rate. It is only 2.25 percent. According to Beximco Pharma, the loan will be drawn down in four tranches and repayment will be made over five years in 10 semi-annual installments. The total interest bearing debt of the company was Tk.480 crore and debt-to equity ratio was 23.5 percent as of September 30 th in 2014. The cost of debt was 16.1 percent on average while debt-to-equity averaged 22.7 percent in the previous four years. That is why analysts think that this loan at a single digit rate will have immense impact...

BASIC Bank has taken an action plan to meet its capital short fall and cover up its negative image. A part of that action plan is that a certain portion of salary will be cut off from the BASIC Bank’s top managers. The BASIC Bank’s goal is to bring back its positive image by 2016. A letter of BASIC Bank to its financial manager reflects such goal and idea. BASIC Bank has faced capital short fall in the month of June of Tk 1,675 crore. It destroyed the image of the bank. The specialized bank in the action plan said that many international banks are not accepting its letters of credits because of these points. In implementing the action plan, the BASIC Bank sought Tk 1,372 crore on an emergency basis from the government. It is necessary to meet up the capital short fall. The top managers of the BASIC Bank have already been forfeited a portion of monthly gross salary. The purpose behind it is to minimize the operating costs. For the first time in the country, six deputy managing director...

Playing a vital part in advertizing, the right media can transform a regular commercial to a block buster advertisement. Where the appropriate media can convey the correct message to the spectators successfully, there the erroneous one can send all the wrong signals and turn the whole mission go in vein .Consequentially, all the efforts will bite the dust. In the current era of technology and immense competition it is quite hard to survive in the prolonged race of capitalistic without innovation and out of the box reflexes. This is so because, observation of the consumer behavior has revealed that, different is the new common in! Assuming the core idea is doing justice to the product and the overall model, apparently modernism is grabbing attention of the customers these days.   Alas! Most of the marketing strategy makers underestimate the significance of choosing the right media or the importance of the knowledge of strategizing. And very often, they stumble on the tho...

“Corporate culture! What is that?” There are many people who ask this question in spite of working several years in the corporate world. In spite of being crucially important, this motion is many a times left in ignorance and indifference. If you close your eyes doesn’t mean everyone else doesn’t see you. What I mean to state is, unawareness does not make corporate culture less important, and thus every corporate member must be aware of the concept of corporate culture and ways to make it healthier. Initiating the discussion, first let us understand what corporate culture is and go to its depth. The part of business involving employee attitudes, standards, policies and procedures, rites and rituals can be assumed as corporate culture. Although it is connected to the surrounding environment yet it has some unique traits as well. It can be negative, positive or even neutral. In most cases it is dynamic and changes with time but it can also be static sometimes. In a nutshell c...

Multinational companies listed on Dhaka Stock Exchange posted a heavy gain in the last calendar year in comparison with that of previous year. There are 13 multinational companies listed on the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) and these hold 34 percent of total market capitalization. DSE data showed that 12 of listed companies’ price appreciated are between 4.88% to 345% and only 1 company experienced 22.5 percent price fall in the concluding year. Recently Lafarge and Holcim have been merged and as a result it earned the highest gain. Its opening price was only tk31 at the beginning which reached tk138 at the end of the year. Grammenphone stands next as its price increased 75.71 percent to tk 360. Berger Paint’s share rose at tk1400 from 850, British American Tobacco Bangladesh placed next to Berger Paints Bangladesh by gaining 62.5 percent resulting tk2600. The price of Bata Shoe increased 57.14 percent, Glaxo SmithKline 50 percent, Marico BD 42.85 percent, Linde BD 40.62 percent, Heidel...

The hectic surrounding of cattle hut is the biggest headache of people right before the Eid-ul-Adha which is coming to an end this year in Bangladesh for the establishment of online shopping.  Facebook pages and websites are recently covered up by photos of goats and cows, many of which are even offering free home delivery. The pictures contain caption of full details of individual animal. Akhoni.com is an online shopping site which is motivating buyers to shop right from their homes. They are announcing their cattle to be absolutely healthy and local on their official facebook page. They are also delivering them to anywhere in Dhaka absolutely free within 24 hrs! On the other hand, another popular online shopping site, Bikroy.com has also been sharing similar advertisements among people. They enlisted such ads under the “Pets and Animals” category.  Whereas the oldest shopping site, Ekhanei.com, enlisted such posts under “Farm Animal” category and contains ads of both loca...

Banking sector is currently one of the most promising growth sectors in Bangladesh. For quite some time, the banks have been participating as a noteworthy contributor in the economic escalation of Bangladesh as we know it through sustainable savings and strategic investments. Both state-run banks and private banks are contributing in the process. However, speculating the huge success of private sector compared to that of public banks or state owned banks and the loss that it is causing to majority tax payers, many experts opined that government should privatize the state owned banks and save the sinking boat of the tax-paying citizens. In the vast never-ending depth of corruption, the state-banks are merely hanging in the balance. Like every other government organization; the public banks are constantly being affected by the political exploitation, lack of transparency, negligence and inefficient security system. With bad debts expanding their roots there seems no sign of recovery o...