"Our legal department is considering the details and we'll make an appeal at the earliest opportunity," SET executive vice president Sopawadee Lertmanaschai told reporters yesterday.

She reiterated that the stock exchange had exercised no bias in the case.

Earlier this week, the court ordered the SET to lift the prohibition, pending a ruling on legal action by IEC.

The company also requested Bt3.1 billion in damages from the SET for alleged harm suffered as a result of its action.

Because of irregular movements in both its share price and trading volume, IEC's stock was banned from net settlement and margin-loan trading for the first time for 15 trading days between October 19 and November 9 last year.

The SET further suspended the stock from trading for five days, from January 16-20, after it found a web of unusual transactions connected with the stock allegedly involving 33 investors who had boosted both the share price and the trading volume.

The suspect transactions, carried out between September last year and January, saw IEC shares jump more than 278 per cent - from Bt1.29 to Bt4.88.

The transaction value at that time also rose, from Bt666.44 million in September to Bt5.186 billion in December - a rise of 678 per cent. The share price made another 51.64-per-cent jump from January 3-13, closing at Bt7.80.

Ahead of the ruling, IEC's stock was blocked from intra-day and margin-loan trading for 60 trading days, from March 22 to June 22.

Sopawadee said that net settlement and margin-loan trade prohibition measures could still be imposed by brokers despite the SET's adherence to the court's ruling.

"Despite the SET's order to abolish such a prohibition [on IEC's stock], each brokerage can ban its customers from net settlement and margin-loan trading of IEC stock as a measure to prevent risk to customers," she said.