News and developments on African capital markets, includes: African securities, African stock exchanges/stock markets, African equities, African bonds, African private equity/venture capital, and African social impact investment
Months of hard work came to a climax when the Botswana Stock Exchange successfully launched its automated trading system (ATS) and now has live trading. This replaces the open outcry trading system and the aim is to make the BSE more visible and trading more efficient.
The Nigerian Stock Exchange says it will have the fastest trading system in Africa when it upgrades its trading to NASDAQ OMX Group’s X-Stream platform, with a target date of second quarter of 2013. The new system will handle a wide range of instruments.
U.S. development finance institution, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), is to invest up to $285 million in financing to private equity funds. These in turn should raise more than $875m, representing the largest commitment by the U.S. Government to impact investing in emerging markets.
Developing Africa’s securities exchanges is critical for the continent’s development, with capital markets standing between huge demand for capital for growth and huge demand to invest. The key issues are on the agenda of The 15th Annual African Securities Exchange Association conference (in Marrakesh, Morocco), hosted by Casablanca Stock Exchange, 12-13 December.
Competitive African bank leaders are seizing opportunities of new technology to reach 250m unbanked families. Conference on emerging markets technology innovation and banking coming up in November in London, organized by Hanson Wade.
The Egyptian Exchange is to introduce new products and trading innovations, including remote orders placed abroad, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), intraday trades and short selling. Mohamed Abdel Salam, chairman of the Exchange, says transparency is up and political uncertainty down in Egypt.
West Africa’s regional stock market the Bourse Regionale des Valeurs Mobilieres (BRVM) has started trading from a new base in Bamako, Mali, after leaving Cote d’Ivoire because of the political crisis. Trading restarted in the new office on 1 March, but volumes are much lower.
The main trading platform of the London Stock Exchange was successfully switched from the previous system yesterday (14 Feb) to the Millennium Exchange computer system. Africa’s biggest exchange, the JSE Ltd announced on 3 Feb that it had concluded a licensing agreement with MillenniumIT to move its equity market trading activity onto Millennium Exchange, planned for the first half of 2012. Millennium IT’s systems are widely installed in African stock exchanges.
The dynamic Ethiopian Commodity Exchange is further spreading its information feed. Now customers can access general information and their accounts through SMS and voice telephone (“Interactive Voice Receiver”) systems, according to an article in Ethiopia’s Fortune newspaper.