Southeast Asian countries are pooling their resources to create a common stock exchange.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will join forces to set up a common trading bourse, according to heads of regional stock exchanges at the third ASEAN Broker Conference and Networking event.
The common bourse will boost the growth of a capital market in the ASEAN region where individual market sizes remain small with weak liquidity and high transaction costs too high to attract global investors, said Ong Li Lee, an executive from the Malaysian Stock Exchange.
She said each local bourse in the region will benefit from this initiative.
As many as 18 stock exchanges from the 10 members of ASEAN are working out details of the plan including trading regulation and money exchange norms to create a single index.
With a total population of more than 600 million, ASEAN countries have a combined gross domestic product of $2.4 trillion, according to the World Federation of Exchanges, which in 2013 ranked the combined ASEAN exchanges at 7th among its 64 members in term of market capitalization.
In 2012, seven exchanges from Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam launched an electronic cross-border order routing system that enables brokers to connect their clients more easily to trade on each other’s exchanges.
The electronically connected gateway is a part of efforts being made by ASEAN policymakers to unite the capital markets in the 10-member bloc.
Trading floors in the ASEAN region take turns annually to host the ASEAN Broker Conference and Networking event with the aim of sharing experience and boosting investment cooperation through bilateral talks and meetings among businesses and securities companies, according to the Hanoi Stock Exchange, which is hosting the third event from October 6-10.
Nguyen Thanh Long, chairman of the exchange, said the annual event should grow into a platform to host not only securities companies, individual brokers and businesses, but also investment funds, asset management funds and institutional investors.
Source: https://www.vietnamcolors.net
Key words: ASEAN, works towards, single, stock exchange
