Iraq's booming stock market to go high tech

Times:

Dodging the curse of the financial crisis that brought the global economy to its knees, Iraq's soaring stock exchange is about to experience its Big Bang.

Already up by about 30 per cent this year, as investors cash in on improved security and rock-bottom share prices, electronic trading is set to be introduced in a month, a move that investors hope will herald a new bonanza.

At present, mustachioed men in smart suits lean over a wooden barrier that rings the trading floor, squinting at a wall of whiteboards on which brokers scribble the price of stocks while jabbering into mobile phones or shouting to clients. This quaint trade in the shares of potentially one of the biggest economies in the Middle East was due to be phased out a year ago but delays in installing equipment and collecting shareholder information from the 91 listed companies foiled that plan.

Only now is the Baghdad bourse ready for its first wave of automation. Traders expect the new system to boost prices further. They are still recovering from their collapse after years of war. The cheapest stock is a ½ dinar - a fraction of a penny - and the most expensive 100 dinar (6p).

Electronic trading will also help the market to expand. Five companies - three banks and two hotels - have already been suspended from manual transactions and should start to be traded electronically by mid-April. The other companies will move over during the course of the year.

Ultimately, the whiteboards will come down and trading will shift to an adjacent room of computers in lines of booths where stockbrokers will work. One investor, Rashid al-Waili, 64, is eagerly awaiting the revolution. “It will quicken the process of selling and buying,” he said. Current transactions take up to two weeks, while shareholder certificates are submitted to the company, verified and handed to the stock exchange. Electronic trading will complete the deal in five minutes.

...

This is a sign of a maturing and independent economy in Iraq after suffering through years of socialism under Saddam and then the chaos that al Qaeda tried to impose on the country. The stocks still seem pretty cheap.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains

James Robbins: ... Bin Laden suggests that President Bush should allow Zarqawi’s body to be returned to his family in Jordan, but this is a matter that is up to the Jordanian government, which so far has not shown much interest in facilitating a homecoming. Bin Laden mocks King Abdullah II, calling him a Coalition minion, and asking “w hat scares you about Abu Musab after he’s dead? You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedin.” A large crowd would definitely turn out, though most people would be on hand to demonstrate their anger and disgust. Last November’s hotel bombings in Amman , masterminded by Zarqawi, are still fresh in people’s memory, and mentioning them to Jordanians has the same visceral impact as memory of the 9/11 attacks does here. Jordan has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards those who choose to mourn the country’s least favorite son, and four opposition members of parliament who paid con
Read more