Zagreb, February 1st, 2011 - Today the CEOs of four stock exchanges of Ljubljana, Zagreb, Macedonia and Belgrade agreed upon further joint cooperation in 2011 and signed the 2011 Annex to the Memorandum of Cooperation. The Memorandum’s key tasks are mainly related to joint development and harmonization activities for enabling remote membership; harmonization of listing criteria for the most demanding market segment (Prime Market); enabling infrastructure intended for cross border transactions; increasing awareness of the importance of the pension reform for capital markets; the establishment of a regional Primary Market, as well as joint educational projects on new products.
Gordana Dostanic and Ivan Steriev Gordana Dostanic, Ivan Steriev, Ivana Gazic and Andrej Sketa
The framework of the partnership was already set up in the Memorandum of Partnership in December 2007 and since then the stock exchanges have organized a number of successful international road-shows, worked together with index companies to strive for new regional indices and exchanged the know-how.
The gradual convergence of markets will continue to be carried out by defining and achieving specific and feasible tasks, but achieving the very challenging goal of the highest degree of regionalization in the long run requires a comprehensive work of all constituents of the capital markets, including relevant state authorities, regulators as well as the business sector itself.
The recent crisis has shown that there are many ways for national economies and business entities to benefit from the possibilities that capital markets could offer and this regional cooperation endeavors to pave the way for greater reliance on the still understated strength and potentials of the regional capital market.