The Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) will approve the new five trading member licences at CSE’s board meeting in May, while bringing in a host of new measures such as reducing CSE transaction cost, according to Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and CSE sources.
 “At the next CSE board meeting scheduled to be held on May 3, the five new trading member licences will be granted,” a CSE source told the Business Times.
According to a source the CSE brokerage fee for transactions below Rs 50 million is also slated to reduce by about 20% with effect from July 1, which an SEC official also confirmed.
This came on the back of a press conference by the SEC on specific Capital Market Development on Thursday. At the briefing, Udaya Sri Kariyawasam, Chairman SEC told the media that now is the time the CSE is taking off and the best time to invest as well as the best time for firms to go public. “The daily average turnover is about Rs. 1.5 billion after the war from an earlier Rs. 500 million, which is a sharp increase. This is due to the political stability in the country and also the peace situation,” he said.
He noted that all five Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) which came into the market after the war were oversubscribed. “This shows that the Sri-Lankan Capital Market can raise capital and that the investors believe in it,” he added. He said the SEC is also bringing draft regulation to list all insurance firms, while collaborating with the Central Bank and the Insurance Board to bring more institutional investors such as the pension funds into the market.
“Some of these funds are not being invested properly and we’re re-visiting the regulations to relax them in order to enable the funds to invest in the capital market.” He added that the Takeover and Mergers Code which was re-drafted and will be put out for public comments by next month. He also said that the SEC together with the CSE is drafting new legislation to set up the Clearing Corporation and to facilitate derivatives.
He said there are about five more IPOs coming out this year while a road-show is planned in Hong Kong by mid-year.
He also said that the CSE Jaffna branch will be opened in the last week of April. |
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