I just came across an interesting article in MoneyLife, where Debashis Basu traces the ups and downs of the Bangladeshi stock markets – He states that during the boom in 1994-95, there were 1400 IPOs in a year! That sounds absolutely unbelievable now – considering 2007 was the big hit year with just 90 IPOs!

The gist of the article is reflected in this paragraph of the article:

“Of the 177 IPOs made in the past three years, only 68 are trading higher than their issue price. Of these, 24 are still showing a price appreciation of 100% or more (as of 21st August) while over 45 stocks are trading at less than half their issue price. Since we now know that investment bankers operate like a herd and are only focused on their fees, we need to ask if the regulator did enough to ensure strict accountability that goes beyond gathering due diligence certificates. The picture only gets worse. The regulator did precious little when investors were being ripped-off but media reports suggest that it was conducting a ponderous investigation that could lead to penalties after the market is all but dead.”