The UAE has called on the Arab Financial Markets to further update mechanisms that commensurate with the needs of investors and market conditions through licensing new financial products and services, and issuance of legislation and regulations to meet the market needs.
The First Arab Capital Markets Conference, which opened here today and organised by the Union of Arab Securities Authorities (UASA) in collaboration with the Securities and Commodity Authority, Thomson Reuters and Arab Monetary Fund, called for introduction of new mechanisms and various technological services. It stressed on the importance of activating the role of corporate governance, enhancing transparency and support mechanism disclosures as well as a commitment to corresponding standards and law enforcement.
Sultan bin Saeed Al Mansouri, Minister of Economy, said the trading in the Arab financial markets amounted to $711.61 billion since the start of the year up until November 19, with a total of 22.34 million deals.
“Strong economic blocs requires maximum cooperation in order to overcome the challenges and difficulties faced by our joint work, which comes in the forefront of legislative structures varied and different organisational structures in the Arab stock markets and the difference in the listing and disclosure requirements,” said Sultan at a capital markets conference.
Investment managers are likely to increase their allocation to the UAE markets, revealed a report conducted by the Inter-Arab Investment Guarantee Corporation on Investment Climate.
About 47 per cent of the respondents of a survey are likely to increase the funds to the UAE market, while more than 50 per cent of those are likely to increase the allocation to Saudi Markets. The Saudi regulator is likely to open the capital markets to the foreigners next year.
The survey also found that 40 per cent of fund managers expected to increase their equity allocations to Egypt and only 7 per cent to decrease them. The results of the survey also showed that funds are positive on many Gulf stock markets despite the recent slide in oil prices, which has lost more than 25 per cent since the start of the year.
“The capital markets regulator said it is facing challenges due to rapid changes in the capital markets. Following the global financial crisis, the regulator faced challenges to revisit old legislations and they had to come up with new amendments, which took time as they had to go through a set process, said Abdullah Salim Al-Turifi, the Chief Executive of Emirates Securities and Commodities Authority.
The year 2013 witnessed a record 23 deal IPO in the Middle East and North Africa, which raised $3 billion, an increase of 64 per cent in terms of volume and 51 per cent in value terms.
Source : WAM News Agency for United Arab Emirates
