SOFIA (Bulgaria), November 1 (SeeNews) – The Bulgarian Stock Exchange (BSE) launched trading in 20 issues of government securities on Wednesday, aiming to boost investor appeal, the bourse CEO, Vassil Golemanski, said.
The total face value of the government securities issues, which will trade on the regulated market of the BSE, is 5.5 billion levs ($3.27 billion/2.8 billion euro), Golemanski said at a news conference.
"With the addition of trading in government bonds we have increased the variety of instruments on the BSE, which will make it [BSE] more attractive to investors. The next step is to include BSE in the settlement of the bonds," Golemanski said.
BSE will apply a 'no-fee' policy to investors trading in government securities for one year, the CEO added.
"The stock exchange plans to launch trading in shares of foreign companies by the end of the year. Those companies are being selected from the pension funds' portfolios," Golemanski told reporters on the sidelines of the news conference.
The other CEO of BSE, Ivan Takev, said in a interview for SeeNews in May that the bourse plans to launch an international segment for trading in shares of foreign companies.
"Stocks from Western European countries and other major markets, including Canada, China and Japan, could be traded on the planned new international segment of the BSE," Takev said.
The BSE will have to request approval for setting up a multilateral trading facility (MTF), Takev said in May. MTFs are self-regulated financial trading venues, which serve as an alternative to traditional regulated markets on stock exchanges. The BSE will need to set up an MTF because most foreign companies do not have prospectuses under the Prospectus Directive of 2003 as they had been admitted to trading before the introduction of the directive, Takev explained.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)