The Capital Markets Authority is in final plans to approve a licence for another bourse ALTX Africa Group Ltd., based in Port Louis, Mauritius to enter the local market.
ALT Xchange Ltd. will compete with the Uganda Securities Exchange, which has 16 listings with trading done by hand, and “drive improvements in the market overall,” CMA Keith Kalyegira, chief executive officer told Bloomberg news.
‘Diversify’ Markets
Uganda’s second exchange will create a platform for cross-listings of debt and equities from other African markets, Kalyegira said in the e-mail March 31. About half of the bourse’s revenue is expected to be raised from listing fees, he said. ALTX still has to meet regulatory conditions including having membership of three brokers independent of each other, according to Kalyegira.
Stock dealers at the Uganda Securities Exchange trading floor. File Photo. By Martin Luther Oketch
“There’s definitely a need to diversify the capital markets in the East African region,” Julians Amboko, a research analyst at Nairobi-based StratLink Africa Ltd., said by phone today.
The ALTX will give competition to the Uganda market, which uses a trading system in which representatives of brokers give orders to a person who writes them on a board, according to the USE’s website. Innocent Dankaine, chief executive officer of the USE, is out of the country until April 4, according to a person who answered the phone at his office.
“Definitely there will be competition for listings” from the new exchange, Stephen Kaboyo, managing director of Alpha Capital Partners, a financial