The Qatar Stock Exchange hosted a dinner event in London for senior representatives of sell side brokers and institutions ahead of the MSCI Emerging Markets upgrade.

The event, held at the Dorchester Hotel in London, helped the bourse officials to meet key traders and sales executives who are responsible for the international order flow into the Qatari Market.

This event complimented the previous road show event where in QSE meet with key decision makers from a number of the world’s largest international buy side institutions.

The visiting delegation was led by Qatar Stock Exchange CEO Rashid al Mansoori who highlighted the achievements and future plans of Qatar Stock Exchange and why it is a favorable investment destination for international fund managers and investment institutions.  
"We believe we have made significant progress at a legislative and technical level, infrastructure and systems, disclosure and governance practices, awareness-raising and spreading the culture of investment; as well as the diversification of investment tools and services provided to investors," he remarked.

Al Mansoori recognized the role played by the sell side institutions in presenting an efficient and easy access to the Qatari Market for the international investors.

He pointed out that Qatar Stock Exchange had implemented a number of measures to enhance the liquidity of the market.

"These measures include tick size changes, adjusting the trading hours, enhancing the number of brokerage firms, assisting in licensing a number of banks as custodians, introducing the concept of liquidity provision and securities lending and borrowing.  Secondly, we have introduced DvP and DMA schemes for foreign brokers, the latter through a sponsoring local broker. Thirdly, QE has introduced a number of new investment tools such as bonds and treasury bills, as well as launching various new indices,” he added.

Al-Mansoori said the bourse was keen to implement the world best practices in securities trading. "The liquidity aspect is our top priority given its importance to the domestic and international investor base.  In this sense, the development of QSE's trading environment (now covering UTP, DvP and Scila) reflects best international practice providing investors with new investment opportunities backed by the existence of efficient and effective systems."
 
Qatar Stock Exchange, he stated, was working on two live ETF projects.  "One of these will be an ETF based on government fixed income risk from an Asian borrower and the second product is likely to be an ETF based on a representative Qatar-country index," he added.-TradeArabia News Service