The Abu Dhabi bourse said on Sunday the value of stocks traded on the exchange plunged about 43 per cent in the second half of 2008 during a global stock market rout that witnessed foreign investors exit en masse.

Total stocks traded in the six months to Decembwer 31 were worth Dh70 billion ($19.06 billion), down from Dh123 billion in the year-earlier period, the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) said in a statement.

The proportion of shares listed on the exchange held by foreign investors fell to 9 percent in 2008 from 13 percent a year earlier, the exchange said in a separate statement.

The largest proportion of foreign investors in 2008 were from Britain, followed by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Luxembourg, the bourse said.

It said institutional investment in the stock exchange increased 34 percent last year to 2,472 entities, accounting for 32 percent of total market trading value.

The bourse was planning to launch exchange-traded funds (ETFs), originally targeted for the end of 2008, by the end of the first quarter, a spokeswoman said.

ETFs are investment vehicles that hold assets such as stocks or bonds and trade at almost the same price as the net value of its underlying assets over the course of the trading day.-Reuters