HSE offers VRS to staff

The exchange currently has about 110 employees, of which five are working on contract basis, with the rest being regular employees. The VRS plan is not offered to the contract workers and the 13 officers.

According to sources, the exchange has issued the offer letters four days ago to the employees, and is awaiting their response. The financial package will be finalised only after negotiating with the employees. The exchange is target ing about 40-50 people to be retired under the scheme.

The sources said HSE had offered to pay whichever was higher of either one month's salary for every year of an employee's service or one month's salary for every remaining year of service. The employees union is planning to negotiate with the exchange management for improving the offer.

HSE, which is suffering from problems similar to all the regional stock exchanges, because of lack of trading interest by its member-brokers and a slew of delistings by local corporates, is now pinning its hopes on the slowly increasing trading volumes.

With the bull run continuing on the major bourses, the exchange has been witnessing a little activity since the past few days. From almost no trading situation a few weeks ago, the number of transactions increased to 15 on Wednesday.

A HSE member-broker commented: "For companies, which are not listed on BSE or NSE, there is no other option available than going for some market making arrangement to create liquidity for their stock."

Currently, about 900 companies are listed on HSE, of which 350 are non-local companies. Of the 550-odd local companies, only 250-300 companies are promptly paying annual listing fees which comes to an aggregate amount of about Rs 1.8 crore.

In a bid to retain the companies that are planning to delist, the exchange has substantially reduced the annual listing fee for the companies.

While the reduction accounts for 50 per cent across all the slabs, in some cases it works out upto 60 per cent due to the introduction of new slabs. The revised listing fee is applicable from April 1, 2004.