Sri Lanka It's Happening

August 5, 2005

A more apt name for the Colombo Stock Exchange would be the Colombo Jokes exchange. If you click the link above and the page actually opens you are lukcy. It's a rare enough occurance particularly during trading hours.

Since the software that powers the exchange itself is prone to frequent crashes we probably shouldn't be complaining about the web site. Supposedly you can trade online but the online trading site is online less often than the main site. Some brokers have been announcing online trading services for more than an year but they don't offer it to their clients yet.

What has really dressed up the CSE in clowns clothing is the debut of Sri Lanka's first Billion Dollar company (Dialog). Since it's debut it has grown in size to 1.2 billion USD or 120 Billion Rupees. That's a whopping 20% of the total market capitalization of the exchange. That means on a day that dialog gains even a quarter the market indices are sure to head north regardless of how badly the other shares perform.

The second biggest capitalized company was created long before the Dialog CEO was even born. That company has been listed for as long as anyone can rember yet it's only half the size of Dialog.

Other conglomerates have been around for nearly a hundred years yet they are not even one fifth the size of dialog.

All this begs the question what have Sri Lankan corporate leaders been doing all this time?
Insider trading, juggling the books, price manipulations, getting into conflict of interest situations and getting away with it all.

Posted by raditha at August 5, 2005 2:12 AM