TIRANA, Feb. 28 – The Albanian Securities Exchange has launched its operations as the country’s first privately-owned stock exchange, initially trading only Albanian government securities before also turning to corporate bonds a year later.
Currently, only three banks, two of which with Albanian capital and shareholders in the stock exchange, have been listed on the Albanian Securities Exchange, licensed by the country’s Financial Supervisory Authority as an alternative investment and borrowing opportunity.
Experts say the stock exchange’s success will depend on the number of businesses that will be listed on it considering the tight capital, profitability and transparency criteria companies have to undergo. The former state-run Tirana Stock Exchange attracted only a handful of companies, leading to its failure in late 2014 after 12 years of inactivity.
The newly established Albanian Stock Exchange, ALSE, is a joint stock company, with three founding shareholders, including the majority Albanian-owned Credins Banks, the country’s third largest commercial bank, which holds a 42.5 percent stake. The other major shareholder is U.S.-Albanian-owned American Bank of Investments which has recently acquired the Albania unit of Greek-owned NGB, increasing its market share in the Albanian banking system to 5.7 percent in terms of assets.
The Albanian Financial Supervisory Authority says the licensing of the private-run stock exchange was a necessity to increase investment alternatives, formalize the economy and boost the transparency of businesses.
“The existence of a regulated market, such as the stock exchange helps businesses to access new capital resources in an environment dominated by low-interests for bank deposits with restrictive loan granting policies,” the Authority’s head, Ervin Koà§i, has recently told Tirana Times in an interview.
“The increase of competition growth in the Albanian economy will encourage businesses to be listed on the stock exchange in order to improve their image to better respond to the market needs. I think that the stock exchange will create possibilities for the unification of needs for local business funds and potential investors, representing a financing alternative to business activity, in addition to bank loans,” he added.
The Financial Supervisory Authority says it has licensed the Albanian Stock Exchange to trade government securities and other financial instruments, establish a multilateral trading platform facilitating the exchange of financial instruments between multiple parties and educating, promoting and providing information to interest groups regarding the capital market and issuers’ activity.
The Albanian Stock Exchange will use the “Quick Trade” e-system also used by regional stock exchanges in Ljubljana, Skopje, Sarajevo and Montenegro which can carry out about 100,000 transactions a day.
