Investors doubt brokerages’ blacklist target

The State Securities Commission (SSC) on April 23 put securities firms Rubber Securities, Vina Securities, Hanoi Securities, Truong Son Securities, Danang Securities and Mekong Securities onto the special control list.

“These brokerages’ available capital to total risk ratio is under 120 per cent, which is far below the minimum 150 per cent,” SSC said on its website.

Being listed means firms are not allowed to pay dividends to shareholders or divide profits or bonus to relevant bodies relating to the companies.

Pham Hong Son, director of SSC Securities Business Management department, said that this blacklist was announced to make investors clearly understand brokerages’ financial health.

“Considering the necessity of protecting investor rights, we have to make the list public,” said Son. “In the next six months, if these ones safety ratio was not improving to required level, they might face closures.”

Investors, however, doubted that this blacklist was aimed to protect their rights as other securities firms like SME, TAS, SBS should be included in the list. “How we are protected is unclear,” an investor said www.f319.vn

“There are no surprises or shocks about the blacklists as we can guess,” added another investor.

Son admitted that as brokerages calculated the available capital to total risk ratio by themselves, their safety ratio might be not true. It is meanwhile SSC had to also ask these securities firms [permission] before announcing.

“For TAS, we suspect the numbers given by TAS and asked the company to calculate again. For SME, the company did not use any reports since October 2011,” said Son.

As SSC did not calculate securities firms’ safety ratio, market analysts said these numbers given by securities firms might be not true and the number of securities firms on the blacklist must be higher.

“We will look into audited financial reports after June 30, 2012 to be clearer about safety ratio of securities firms,” said Son.