One of the leading financial markets in the region, the Qatar Stock Exchange (QSE) has revealed its three-year strategic plan which focuses on diversification offerings supported by the launch of a derivatives market.
QSE’s strategic plan was presented at a Qatar Financial Markets Authority gathering which discussed several critical matters including product diversification, short selling and listing rules.
Sharing few insights about the interaction, the exchange’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Rashid bin Ali Al Mansoori tweeted that “We held yesterday a Strategy Session over a business lunch with the Qatar Financial Markets Authority, during which we presented our 3-year strategic plan to align with the Regulator and update it with the progress achieved.”
“During the meeting, we also discussed various topics such as the launch of a derivatives market and upgrade of Qatar market from Emerging Market to Advanced Market status, as well as product diversification and enhancement of SLB, short selling and listing rules,” the QSE CEO added.
Over the last decade, the exchange has been at the forefront of introducing several measures and initiatives to attract individual and institutional investors to the market. Earlier in 2019, QSE implemented a 1:10 stock split across all companies on the exchange reducing the nominal value of shares to just $.27 (QAR 1). The move allowed QSE to improve market liquidity through increased trading activity (generating more shares available for trading) and to make singular equity shares more affordable to the investors. The strategy was a huge success with weekly trading volumes on the exchange more than doubled driven by foreign institutional investors in addition to increased trading activity from local individual investors.
Foreign Investment Spree
Qatar Stock Exchange has been a considerable increase in the investments made by non-Qatari institutional investors led by the increase in foreign ownership limits for QSE listed companies from 25 percent to 49 percent in 2014.
Transparency
QSE was also among the first stock exchanges in the world to encourage transparency and disclosure by promoting the digitalization of environment, social and governance (ESG) data. With the support of the Qatar Financial Markets Authority, QSE launched its online platform Sustainability and ESG Dashboard in 2018 to support listed companies to disclose their ESG and sustainability performance to investors and other relevant stakeholders.
The online platform also seeks to improve the attractiveness of individual companies and the QSE as a whole to international investors.
