AR Coutinho, deputy manager of the BSE, has told the company that it takes a serious view of the company's failure to redress investor complaints, and will refer the complaints to the Securities & Exchange Board of India and the Finance Ministry.

On April 23, The Financial Express had reported how the company had left its Calcutta staff and depositors clueless about repayments of maturing deposits. In September, the company closed down its office here. The company was running smoothly up to September 1996. Even after this, it managed to repay maturing deposits up to June 1997. The company had mobilised around Rs 6 crore from depositors, of which it had repaid around Rs 3crore.

It stopped issuing dividend warrants in October last year because of an acute funds crunch. Depositors from the eastern region alone have filed over 200 complaints with the Company Law Board, which has got a total of around 1300 complaints from all over the country.

The company earlier belonged to the Nagarjuna group, but changed hands a couple of years ago when it was taken over by a Delhi-based industrialist R S Chowdhury.

The company ran into serious financial problems when its loans in the ICD market turned sticky. Many companies to whom it had lent money went into deep financial problems themselves.

With no funds, Asia Pacific found it extremely difficult to service its large FD base of around Rs 60 crore. And then, the pressure on FD withdrawals intensified leading to defaults.

Asia Pacific has been rendering a full-range of investment banking services like organising public issue of shares and debentures, loan syndication in India and abroad, acting as managers to the issue and fixeddeposit schemes. The company is also has been engaged in leasing.