AMMAN SE future outlook 2008

Monday, 17 December 2007

Amman Stock Exchange Future Outlook


The Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) will embark on a number of key projects that will ensure maintaining the lead that the ASE has amongst Arab and regional stock exchanges. These projects can be summarized as follows:


 



  • Establish Jordan National Financial Center. This center will contain: the ASE, Securities Depository Center (SDC), Financial Studies Center, Brokers Offices, Investors Gallery, and many other facilities. The external design of the building is inspired from the Siqq of Petra which is considered an ancient symbol in Jordans history. The Center total area is around 86 thousand square meters with a building area around 52 thousand square meters

  • Upgrade the ASE Trading System. In this regard a contract was signed with AtosEuronext Market Solutions and GL Trade for Euro 2.5 million. The new trading system is V900 and is fully Linux environment. It is to mention that this system applied in major stock exchanges. This system will be more flexible to implement market rules and will highly improve system capacity and lower latency.

  • Demutualization of the ASE. The ASE is negotiating with alliances to support demutualization process. The ASE shall become Shareholding Company totally owned by the Government as a first step. In the second step the Government will sell a stake to financial institutions, brokerage firms, international institutions, public, and other parties.

  • Introduce Internet trading.  The legal and technical structure for this project was completed.

 



  • Improve on-line trading information dissemination by introducing new products such as launching the ASE Market Watch application for investors as a corporate and retail product through Internet.

  • Adopt new marketing strategy. The ASE has adopted a marketing and promotion strategy based on three main fields: Awareness, Marketing and Media. The implementation of this strategy started in the 2007 and will continue in the coming few years.

  • Implement, for the first time, a Codes of Corporate Governance for the companies listed at the ASE. The introducing of this Code is considered an important step forward in the field of enhancing monitoring and transparency over public shareholding companies and in preserving the rights of all stakeholders in these companies.

  • Introduce new financial instruments such as derivatives.