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
Africa’s 24 stock markets should learn to work together better if they are to seize high levels of investor interest, said Nicky Newton-King, CEO of South Africa’s JSE Ltd. She told an interviewer that plumbing, – technology and other links between exchanges and clearing and settlement – were more likely routes to more liquidity than trying to create a single exchange.
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 ten stock exchanges of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) are working together to increase the effectiveness of their markets. The Committee of SADC Stock Exchanges (CoSSE) has agreed to concentrate on six priority areas in support of regional moves to more efficient capital markets.
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.
The International Finance Corporation plans to invest up to $700 million in new African telecommunications projects in this year and the next, says Reuters.
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.
A top conference from 17-19 October will be “Investment & Innovation in Microfinance: Africa” (www.microfinance-africa.com), with a great lineup of speakers, investors and MFIs.
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.
The Nairobi Stock Exchange has bought a new broker back office (BBO) system which it hopes will boost liquidity and attract listings, including offering online trading and is set to go live this March. The exchange and the vendor, Chella Software of India, are training personnel at stockbrokers, investment banks and others. The system cost KSh75 million (US$880,000).
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.