African stock exchanges to find ways to work together

A Pan-African stock exchange is most unlikely to be established because of the passion for owning a national exchange, says Nicky Newton-King, newly appointed head of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE).

She however cautions “We're going to fail the continent if we do not find a way to work together as exchanges to build bigger and deeper capital markets”.

“The reality is Africa's time is coming and everybody wants a bit of Africa and it's very difficult for investors to get a better of Africa [trade] if we don't create capital markets for them,” said Newton-King, who becomes JSE's Chief Executive Officer with effect from 1 January 2012.

The JSE controls about 65 percent of total market capitalization of Africa's stock exchanges. Most of the 24 other exchanges, including the Ghana Stock Exchange, share between zero and 1 percent.

In comparison to the airline business, Newton-King noted that it is an incorrect concept for every country to own a stock exchange “because an exchange is a facilitator, an agent and has to provide services to issues of listed companies and investors.”

The 120 year-old JSE Limited, she said, is 50 percent owned by people outside of South Africa. “It is very expensive to run an exchange and not commercially viable to have lots of exchanges all around the continent”, she told a group of African journalists on a Thomson Reuters Foundation workshop in South Africa.

Newton-King observed that “an average day's trade on the JSE is more than the annual turnover of Mauritius and Kenya taken together”, emphasizing that big investors may be unwilling to buy shares in companies listed on those markets because of the size of the stock exchange is too small.

JSE Limited therefore expects big and small exchanges to collaborate “to build a bigger pool of liquidity” of a virtual single exchange for companies to cross-list and trade in bigger markets.

The partnership strategy, according to Michelle Joubert, JSE's Head of Investor Relations, includes dual listing of companies from the rest of the continent on the JSE “to enable issuers to take advantage of increased profile and new capital raising opportunities.”

She added that a technology hub should also be built to ease the activities of the exchanges for increased trade.

“As far as we're concerned we don't need a Pan-African stock exchange. The kind of cooperation that we're looking for is more of shared experiences and working together”, noted Joubert.

South Africa is ranked first in the world for securities market regulation, according to the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report.

The JSE is among three other African countries accepted as members of the World Federation of Exchanges (WFE). The others are Morocco, Egypt and Mauritius.

Kofi Adu Domfeh reporting from Joburg-South Africa