A trader monitors stocks at the Nairobi Securities Exchange. The bourse
aims to launch derivatives market in first half 2019. FILE PHOTO | NMG
The Nairobi stock exchange aims to launch a derivatives market
in the first half of 2019 after long delays and wants to list at least
two new firms by the end of the year, executives at the Kenyan bourse
said on Wednesday.
Nairobi Securities Exchange, the
main entry point for foreigners seeking to invest in East Africa, has
worked on plans for a derivatives market for years but has previously
said it was taking longer than expected to set up the infrastructure.
“The
general idea is to launch within this half of the year,” said Terrence
Adembesa, the exchange’s derivatives market director, adding tests had
been completed and a final request for approval to start trading had
been sent to the regulator.
He did not give details of
contracts to be traded, but the exchange said in the past it would start
with stock index futures and would add single stock and currency
futures later.
Exchange executives have said launching derivatives trading would boost liquidity on the bourse, which has 65 listed firms.
It will become the second exchange in Sub-Saharan Africa to take such an initiative, after Johannesburg.
Bahati Morara, NSE’s business development director who was
speaking at the same news conference, said the bourse aimed to list two
new companies, supermarket chain Tuskys and state-run National Oil
Corporation of Kenya (NOCK), by the end of 2019.
The
government announced its intention to list NOCK in September 2017 to
raise $1 billion in a dual listing on the Nairobi bourse and the London
Stock Exchange (LSE) by early 2019.
“We are looking at a
crosslisting this year,” Morara said, adding that the Nairobi bourse
had been in talks with the LSE on an initial public offering (IPO) for
NOCK since last year.
The bourse’s main NSE20 Share Index fell 24 per cent in 2018 and has climb about 4 per cent since the start of 2019.
No comments:
Post a Comment