The Hindu Business Line : 61 cos have wrong telephone numbers on BSE site

Mumbai, Sept. 9 “Please check the number you have dialled,” is the message that you are likely to hear if you tried to contact any of the top companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange. In another five per cent of the cases you may not even have that privilege as the company contact numbers are completely missing.

A Business Line investigation of a cross-section of the BSE-500 list of companies revealed this.

The telephone numbers of 61 of the top 260 companies on the BSE are incorrect – they are either old numbers or in some cases, as it turned out, fax numbers. Another 14 have not furnished contact numbers.

The companies with incorrect numbers include the industry heavyweights such as Larsen and Toubro, HDFC Bank, Tata Steel, Tata Motors, ACC and Hindalco.

Surprisingly, the companies were unaware that the contact information is incorrect or not updated. For instance, a spokesperson of Tata Motors one of the companies could only say, “We apologise for the mistake and will correct the same immediately.” The spokesperson of HDFC Bank echoed the same statement.

BSE – the key source

“As an investor, the BSE Web site is the best way for me to get in touch with the company if I need to speak to it in any regards. However, the phone numbers of top companies are not updated leaving it to us to find alternative methods to contact the company or we have to ask our depository participant to get clarification on news the company may have announced,” said Mr Kantibhai Shah, a retail investor in Mumbai.

The BSE spokesperson said the exchange has been asking the companies regularly to update their contact details and other information; however, the companies have not done it. The BSE has also provided the electronic filing mechanism to simplify the procedures. Mr Kalyan Bose, Head – Corporate Communications, BSE said, “The companies do not realise the importance of communication and have failed to update the data.”

Until last week, the contact details did not even contain the STD codes along with the telephone numbers of companies adding to people’s woes. This addition was done last week.

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