The initial public offering this week of Bangladesh’s biggest telecommunications company has been heralded as the long-awaited coming-of-age of the Dhaka Stock Exchange.

Grameenphone raised $71m from local retail investors, in a country where the stock market has been viewed with suspicion since a brutal 1996 crash. Prospective investors waited in long queues for a chance to buy into Grameenphone, 62 per cent owned by Norway’s Telenor and 38 per cent by an arm of the pioneering microfinance institution Grameen Bank.