The country's premier bourse has taken initiative to implement the technical and business proposals earlier offered by its strategic partner, a Chinese consortium comprising Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchanges.
As part of implementing the proposals, the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) has formed three teams which are working to select the proposals based on demand and priority.
The Chinese consortium became the strategic partner of the premier bourse in May, 2018 purchasing 25 per cent stake as per the demutualisation scheme.
Along with purchasing the stake, the consortium offered the technical support worth nearly $37 million for free.
"By selecting the proposals, the DSE teams will submit their plans in respective areas by this month. Our implementation jobs will be started from the next month," the DSE managing director K. A. M. Majedur Rahman told the FE.
He said their teams are separately working to select the Chinese consortium's proposals regarding IT, business and internal development of the stock exchange.
"They will select the proposals considering their viability in the context of the exchange and the capital market," the DSE managing director said.
Apart from selling stakes, the objective of including the strategic partner is to facilitate the introduction of new products, the exchange's good governance, and further infrastructure development.
The Chinese consortium proposed to add value in different areas such as capital formation, SME capital market development, product diversification, information disclosure and investors relations service automation framework, human resource development, trading surveillance, and financial cloud proposition and financial data exchange platform (FDEP) technology.
In August, 2018 the DSE and the Chinese consortium completed relevant formalities of transferring shares on receipt of funds.
But the premier bourse is yet to materialise any of the proposals offered by its strategic partner.
In this regard, the DSE officials said it took time to complete the relevant formalities of receiving fund against the shares sold to strategic partner.
"Before implementing any proposal we will have to be clear about its relevance. Now we have started the job of selecting the proposals on priority basis," a DSE official said.
The Chinese consortium offered to assist the DSE in developing index-based products, bonds and asset-backed securities.
It also offered to assist in developing derivatives market, among other business proposals, at the premier bourse DSE.
The consortium also offered to assist in introducing a financial data exchange platform (FDEP), among other technical offers.
The FDEP is a mature software system that provides a secure, reliable and fast channel for trading, flow of funds and information for various types of financial institutions.
Mr. XIE Wenhai is now representing the strategic partner in the board of the premier bourse.
As per the DSE demutualisation scheme, approved by the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC) on September 26, 2013, the bourse's shareholders primarily got 40 per cent of its total stakes along with receiving TREC (trading rights entitlement certificate).
Of the remaining 60 per cent shares, 25 per cent have been kept in block account for strategic investor. This amount of shares has already been sold to the Chinese consortium.
Besides, 35 per cent shares have been set aside for institutional and individual investors, which will be offloaded through initial public offering (IPO).
