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Southeast Europe
May 3, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 15
INTERVIEW:
2019 to be year of truth for Albania’s new securities exchange
Clare Nuttall in Tirana
Albania’s new stock exchange, the Albanian Securities Exchange (ALSE), has racked up a year of trading in government paper and is poised to start accepting the country’s first ever private sector IPOs this year.
ALSE, launched by a group of financial markets specialists, is a fresh start for the Albanian capital market after the dismal record of the Tirana Stock Exchange (TSE), which in its 18 years of operation never had a single listed security or carried out
a single transaction.
The decision to start anew was made back in 2014. “ALSE was an idea of a bunch of financial markets guys who studied abroad. We came together with a project and tried to raise funds from domestic sources to make it happen,” says the exchange’s CEO Artan Gjergji in an interview with bne IntelliNews.
“The support from Credins Bank was critical as we wanted support from reputable financial institutions and not just anybody who has some money. We needed to be serious and we succeeded. We managed to attract even the interest of the American Bank of Investments (a bank with US capital operating in Albania) and that of AK-Invest, one of the biggest domestic non-banking financial institutions.”
ALSE received its licence from the Albanian financial markets regulator in July 2017. This was followed by a period of interfacing and testing with the cen- tral depository system for government securities
ALSE management meeting with brokers and representatives of securities exchange members.
administered by Albania’s central bank, the Bank of Albania, after which, says Gjergji, “for the first time in the economic history of Albania we started trading securities officially on February 22, 2018”.
Turnover on the exchange amounted to €16.5mn between February 22 when trading started and the end of October, with over 100,000 securities units bought and sold in 85 transactions.
In the last few days, ALSE announced that it had received its Market Identifier Code (MIC), and on April 25 it reported the first transaction by a brokerage firm (rather than a bank).
For its first year of operation, ALSE was restricted to trading in government paper, but should be able to start trading corporate paper before long, once the infrastructure is in place. “One hurdle to be overcome was the lack of a central depository,” explains Gjergji.
At the end of January, the Albanian Financial Security Agency (AFSA) licensed the Albanian Securities Registry (ALREG), in an important step for the market. “ALREG’s licensing was a necessary step to enable the trade of corporate securities in ALSE, because this process is impossible without
a registry where securities ownership data are held (a central depository) and transactions are executed with them,” says Gjergji.
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