MSM achieves yet another milestone

20/10/2012 09:27 AST

IT is yet another milestone for Muscat Securities Market – its entry into the World Federation of Exchanges (WFE) last week. With this the local bourse has joined the world class of exchanges with the best advanced practices. WFE is a central reference point for the securities industry. It offers guidance to the members in their business strategies, and in the improvement and harmonisation of their management practices.

MSM has been an affiliate with WFE for the last six years and its efforts for getting full membership bore fruits when its General Assembly granted permission at its meeting in Taiwan last week. As optimistic as before, Ahmed bin Saleh al Marhoon, Director-General of the MSM, says: “The entry to WFE is an international recognition of the advanced level reached by MSM and clearly indicates that the local bourse is firmly and clearly heading towards internationalism”.

In February, the local bourse made its migration to NYSE Technologies' NSC V900 trading platform. The innovative trading infrastructure offers market participants the benefits of industry leading performance and speed. “We are not so different from other exchanges in the developed world. The NYSE technology is just one example of how advanced we are”, says Marhoon.

The NSC platform is utilised by numerous Exchanges across the globe and its implementation at MSM has, definitely, provided it with significant performance enhancements and the scalability necessary to support the development and growth. With more than 50 exchange members across the securities and futures industry, WFE acts as a discussion and policy forum — focused on its annual general assembly — for issues including self regulation, enforcement, trading halts and securities business conduct.

WFE member exchanges are key national economic actors in their countries, with a few members now spanning several jurisdictions and time zones.

As a continuing process in the development of the securities market, the MSM has developed its regulations to provide information and financial data relating to the performance of the market and all listed companies directly to investors through a highly advanced electronic trading system.

Also the laws make Oman favorable for investors. Ever since its inception, there have been no restrictions on foreign investment in Oman. Foreign investment is open directly through the MSM. Any company that wants to be listed has to abide by international accounting standards. Marhoon said in a recent interview: “We are so advanced compared to many other countries. This makes Oman attractive to foreign investment with zero tax on capital gains whatsoever. The tax on corporations is minimal. There is no restriction on the movement of capital. Of course, for money laundering there are restrictions”.

Though small, MSM is one of the fastest growing equity bourses in the MENA region, supported by the intrinsic strength of the economy, relatively strong performance of the corporate sector driven by the developmental measures taken by prudent policy makers.

It is also one of the best markets in the GCC region in terms of dividend yield while ranking well above the GCC average.

For more on this:

http://main.omanobserver.om/node/116679

Oman Daily Observer