Deputy Economy Minister Mohammad Ali Dehqan-Dehnavi was appointed Tuesday as new managing director of the Securities and Exchange Origination by the High Council of Securities and Exchange.
Dehnavi succeeded Hassan Qalibaf-Asl who tendered his resignation to Economy Minister Farhad Dejpasand last week amid turmoil in the stock market and growing protests by retail investors against his performance, the Securities and Exchange News Agency reported.
A former board member of Bank Maskan, the state-owned housing lender, Dehnavi is a faculty member of the Financial and Banking Department of Allameh Tabataba'i University. He holds a PhD in economic science from Tarbiat Modares University.
Qalibaf-Asl stepped down barely after nine months after his assignment coincided with a series of bizarre developments in the half century history of the bourse.
He took office in April 2020 when the main index of Tehran Stock Exchange was around 600,000 points and poised for a big jump as a red carpet was rolled out for new investors with little or no financial literacy.
Novice investors rushed to the bourse as never before bringing fresh liquidity to push up share prices that were already inflated and seen by most market observers as a bubble ready to burst.
Data released by the Central Securities Depository of Iran show that more than 8.83 million trading codes were issued for new investors in the first half of the current fiscal year, an unusual number compared to less than 12 million issued in more than a half a century.
Riding on the back of fresh liquidity flooding the share market, the TEDPIX jumped 300% in less than five months and crossed the historic high of 2.1 million points.
Triggered by huge sell-off by institutional traders, mostly in shares of companies affiliated to the government, the bubble burst and the TEDPIX crashed and lost half its value, leaving millions of retail traders in the lurch and forcing the CEO to resign.
In his resignation letter Qalibaf-Asl said his efforts to lift the struggling stock market were futile "due to politicized moves and intervention of non-professionals in the capital market.”
