Bahrain Bourse is working towards creating a full-fledged business model for buyers and sellers alike, the exchange's top official said yesterday.

Bahrain Bourse director Fouad Rahman Rashid was addressing a gathering of international and local finance industry leaders during the Euromoney Bahrain conference, said a report in our sister publication, the Gulf Daily News.

The bourse, which currently had a low share of the regional capital market trading turnover at only two per cent, had a new strategy which targeted growing it 10-fold to 20 per cent in the medium term, Rashid added.

He said the bourse was working towards more listings and wider retail investor participation.

There were plans to introduce an automated disclosure system, which would ensure greater, faster and more reliable information transparency and access.

BHB has also identified a vendor to replace the current trading system with a more robust, high-tech system.

The exchange also planned to offer lower commissions and fee waivers/holidays to incentivise brokers to go for online trading.

Another upcoming development is remote trading which would enable some sort of virtual consolidation of GCC bourses.

Brokerages across the region would be able to execute trades on the bourse, without having a presence here.

More than half of the bourse investors were non-Bahraini which makes it a regional exchange already, the director said.

On being asked if the global sentiment toward equity markets had changed, Rashid said confidence was coming back. – TradeArabia News Service