Deutsche Borse to sell BSE indices overseas

Germany’s Deutsche Börse (DB), which owns a 5 per cent equity stake in the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), has been made an exclusive worldwide sales partner for all indices of the Indian bourse. The move opens up prospective trading interest for the domestic indices in European and other Asian markets.

The BSE, which is Asia’s oldest stock exchange, is yet to attract investors’ fancy in derivatives trading in its indices, and the move is aimed to attract more investor interest in its indices, especially from among foreign investors.

At a later stage, this would also help the exchange in activating its derivative segment by luring foreign institutional investors (FIIs) to its products, said its officials. Already, Barclays has an ETF (exchange-traded fund) listed on the Singapore exchange (iShares Sensex), which tracks the BSE’s main index.

The BSE would also get to earn a licence fee from the users of its indices through the latest initiative, said senior officials.

Read more in The Business Standard article.

BSE demutualised; LIC, SBI, AV Birla group pick up stakes

The Bombay Stock Exchange, Asia’s oldest, on 18 May completed a nearly two-year exercise of corporatising itself by offloading 51% of broker members’ stake to 19 investors including SBI, LIC and Aditya Birla group, besides Deutsche Borse and Singapore Exchange.

The corporatisation or demutualisation process was to have been completed by 19 May as mandated by the Securities and Exchange Board of India under the BSE (Corporatisation and Demutualisation) Scheme, 2005.Before demutualisation, 790 broker-members held 100% in the 131-year-old exchange.

The 19 investors have picked up 41% stake and the remaining 10% was sold to Deutsche Borse and Singapore Exchange (SGX), who picked up 5% each for Rs189 crore at Rs5,200 a share earlier this year.The market capitalisation of the BSE now stands at around $1 billion.

T V Raghunath, executive president, investment banking, Kotak Mahindra Capital Company, which was the exclusive financial advisor to the demutualisation process, said that a total of $500 million was collected through the stake sale.

Read more in The Live Mint article.

LIC, SBI in race to buy BSE stake

State Bank of India and Life Insurance Corporation are among the front runners to pick up stake in the Asia's oldest bourse Bombay Stock Exchange, which has to demutualise by May 19.Under demutualisation, BSE has to off-load 51% stake in the stock exchanges owned by 790 brokers. The exchange has already offloaded 10% stake to Deutsche Bourse and Singapore Exchange and 41% has to be sold by next week.

BSE has received interest from over 20 leading domestic and foreign financial institutions for offloading remaining 41% stake. The long overdue announcement of the remaining 41% stake is likely next week, a BSE official said.

BSE is keeping the names of the firms, which have applied for picking up stakes, under wraps but indication are SBI, LIC and Bank of India are among 20 firms and FIs that have applied for.

Read more in The Times of India article.