ISE in listings market venture

The Irish Stock Exchange (ISE) has established a new listing market for securities, as part of a joint venture with its Maltese counterpart.

The new venture — the European Wholesale Securities Market — will cater for international asset and credit-backed securities and will be 80% owned by the ISE. The market will be based at, and regulated by, the Malta Stock Exchange.

There are currently three listing options for debt securities in Europe — Luxembourg, Dublin and London; with some 117,000 securities listed in the EMEA region.

The ISE ranks highly for listed structured debt products and will actually pose as a competitor to the new market. However, the ISE isn’t anticipating any cannibalisation of its existing listings. The European Wholesale Securities Market is aimed at securities based in northern Africa, the Middle East and the Mediterranean, which may not normally look to Dublin as a listing option.

“We’ve been exploring ways to expand and diversify our activities in this area for some time,” said ISE chief executive Deirdre Somers. “The European Wholesale Securities Market creates an additional market choice for debt issuers, which we believe is timely and attractive. It also allows the ISE to extend its geographic reach and to build on our established reputation in market and listing support services.

“Our strategy on this was two-fold: defensive in that this is a growing area and if we didn’t take a lead, someone else would have; and offensive in that markets are changing and products offered by exchanges are changing,” she added.

While the ISE is looking to diversify, it does not see its future being reliant on a full merger with another international exchange. Ms Somers said that the Maltese partnership could be the first of many such tie-ins, with bourses in the Middle East becoming the main targets of the venture.