The Qatar Stock Exchange’s (QSE) junior bourse QE Venture Market (QEVM) will start functioning in the next few weeks offering an alternative path for the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to list and trade.
The QEVM would offer SME owners an opportunity to be listed in the bourse following lighter and flexible rules while giving more finance sources to help them to expand their businesses.
Commenting on the initiation of QEVM, Rashid bin Ali al-Mansoori, the chief executive of QSE stated that “The launch of the new market comes within the framework of QSE’s vision and strategy aimed at diversifying investment options and products available to individual and institutional investors.” He further stressed QSE’s role in providing expansion opportunities for growing Qatari SME’s, in line with Qatar National Vision 2030.
The QEVM provides SMEs with many advantages as it enables them to diversify sources of funding through access to permanent equity capital at the same time offering liquidity as well as visibility to financial, family or minority shareholders.
The key focus of the new market is in offering flexibility in the listing requirements which would suit SMEs, with a limited track record and fewer resources to meet the investor relations and corporate governance practices demanded in the main market.
The launch of QEVM is the result of intense efforts made by the QSE over the past years to develop Qatar’s capital market, through continuous consultations with private and family-owned companies to identify their needs and offer them suitable solutions and incentives for listing in the market, the Director of QSE’s Listing Department, Abdulaziz Nasser al-Emadi states.
The stocks listed on the QEVM will be traded in the same manner as those on the main market in terms of order types, corporate actions and settlement/clearing arrangements. The pricing will also be the same as the main market.
Investors will not need to extract a new investor number to trade in the QEVM since no new investor numbers (NIN’s) are required to be issued for the investors who have already existing numbers. The orders in the QEVM are carried out through the brokers licensed by the Qatar Financial Market Authority (QFMA).
Further, the QEVM will follow the same continuous trading pattern as the main market. The stock quotes of the QEVM will be broadcasted on a separate market watch on the QSE website and independent from the main market screens. The trading volumes and other relevant data for the QEVM will also be reported on the site on a daily basis.
