With over three decades in Bangladesh’s banking sector, I’ve witnessed its resilience, potential, and persistent weaknesses.

The Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC) recently released its draft rules for initial public offerings (IPOs), which propose a strict prohibition on using IPO proceeds to repay loans. The draft also introduces several other controls over how companies may deploy funds raised from the public. These rules raise a key question about the appropriate level of flexibility companies should have when allocating capital raised from shareholders.

Bangladesh has lost one of its most enduring builders. M Matiul Islam, the country’s first finance secretary and a pioneering figure in the nation’s economic architecture, passed away on November 20 at the age of 95.

If digital banking were a cricket match, Bangladesh would still be warming up while Kenya and Ghana are already batting in the Super Over. The idea is simple: if a country wants to take banking to the unbanked, it must go where the unbanked actually live, outside traditional banking halls, far away from the marble floors and token queues. Most African nations figured this out early.

There is a rule in complex systems: fragility gathers at the bottom, but the tremor is felt at the top. Bangladesh's food system follows this rule to the letter.

Recent news of corporate giants like Amazon and Nestle cutting thousands of jobs is part of a global trend where organisations are restructuring due to a challenging external environment. Each retrenchment directly affects the employee, their immediate family members and the people they support.

After a long period of faulty medical treatment, when a patient is sent to the ICU, doctors then have a limited scope for any aggressive treatment, and the chance of recovery becomes faint. A similar situation has unfolded in the banking sector.

Though I spent my banking life with foreign banks, I was mostly half-hearted about knowing the courtroom performance of local lawyers. Many were seen arriving without having done enough homework before defending their clients.

At a college reunion, everyone began boasting about promotions, new cars, and busy lives. Still, within minutes, the conversation shifted to stress, exhaustion, and the familiar Bangladeshi complaint that the country was draining them.

Bangladesh has been suffering from a mix of micro and macroeconomic pressures since August 2024. The banking sector, already weakened over many years, is now in trouble, marked by a capital shortfall, soaring non-performing loans (NPLs), and corruption.

Mutual funds play a vital role in modern capital markets. By pooling savings from thousands of small investors and investing them in diversified portfolios of stocks and bonds, they help make the market more efficient, liquid and stable. For ordinary investors, mutual funds offer a simple way to take part in the market without having to research or monitor individual securities.

Let me tell you about two people.

While at PwC, we implemented many CBS (core banking system), ERP (enterprise resource planning), CRM (customer relationship management), data analytics or technology transformation projects at various enterprises or banks. While our clients focused on smooth implementation by engaging our cross-border or the best of local resources, senior regulators or bureaucrats often used to ask us why we engaged so many cross-border technology experts and why we did not pursue joint business relationships or rely more on local firms. The hard truth was that we often had to engage cross-border resources because there was an identified shortage of trained local technology project implementation teams or firms.

The country’s pharmaceutical industry has achieved remarkable growth over the past four decades. Meeting 98 percent of the domestic demand for medicines worth more than $3 billion and exporting to over 150 countries, including highly regulated markets such as the UK, the US and the EU, it has become a sector of immense strategic importance.

The Bangladesh Bank has set a critical economic goal: to increase the nation’s foreign exchange reserves to approximately $40 billion by June 2026 to stabilise the local currency and bolster economic confidence. While this target is ambitious, recent trends show momentum.

The Bangladesh Bank’s recent decision to merge five distressed Islamic banks into a single entity has been widely praised as a bold move to protect depositors and preserve financial stability.

I became a credit signatory at ANZ Grindlays Bank in 1992. At Standard Chartered Bank, I had to clear all fourteen modules of the Credit Skills Assessment (CSA) by OMEGA London to qualify as a proper risk manager. At Citibank N.A., apart from my long experience in corporate banking and loan restructuring, I also needed cross-border audit exposure to even be considered for the Senior Credit Officer (SCO) designation.

If you have ever seen a group photograph of professional accountants, you might notice something curious. Everyone looks serious, composed, almost expressionless. It is not that accountants dislike joy. They simply know that smiling in public can lead to someone asking for “just a quick look at my accounts”, which is never quick, never simple and rarely free of emotional pain.

As global supply chains adapt to new sustainability rules, one development stands out for its transformative potential: the digital product passport (DPP). For the Bangladesh RMG industry, which drives the export economy, this is not a distant regulatory concept. It is a near-term requirement that could redefine access to the European Union market, our single largest destination for apparel exports.

Last Eid-ul-Azha, I watched my mama in Banani decide he would handle the entire qurbani himself: choosing the cow, doing the paperwork, collecting the cash, sending out the cuts, even cooking the curry while wearing a whistle for some reason.