(AFP Photo)
By Doaa Farid
Stock exchange management have denied rumours regarding the exchange’s privatisation and its conversion into a shareholding company, stressing that their focus would be on restructuring to boost market efficiency, according to a statement.
The media had reported on Sunday a plan to privatise the stock exchange market, citing a set of documents discussing the alternatives of implementation.
Hisham Turk, a member in the exchange’s board of directors, said the documents were from study submitted to the government in 2008. “Now however,” said Turk “we’re focusing on activating the self-regulatory system.”
Such self-regulation, Turk explained, would entail the market setting and implementing its own set of rules independent of the Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA).
This focus has come in light of the initiative of the EGX and the FSA to reexamine the rules organising the stock exchange and boost efficiency.
Turk explained that the 2008 study included two alternatives to privatising the bourse, including: making the bourse a self-regulated organisation; and affiliating the bourse with the government but on a conditional basis.
“Since the appointment of the current chairman of the stock market, Mohamed Omran, and the head of the FSA, Sherif Sami, several meetings have been held to discuss the self-regulatory option,” Turk said.
The FSA is tasked with taking precautionary measures for all trading on the stock market.
Mohamed Omran was appointed as the chairman of the bourse in August. He was the former head of the stock exchange until he submitted a request to former prime minister Hesham Qandil to not have his term renewed. He resigned in July 2012.
