Middle Eastern trading venue the Qatar Exchange (QE) has migrated cash equities trading to global exchange group NYSE Euronext's Universal Trading Platform (UTP) as part of an ongoing drive to transform Doha into a major global financial centre.
The Qatar Exchange, previously the Doha Securities Market, was reconstituted in June 2009 as a partnership between NYSE Euronext and the State of Qatar. It now intends to launch new products for its cash market and enhance its connectivity via NYSE's Secure Financial Transaction Infrastructure. It is also plans to open a derivatives market in Qatar, but a date has not yet been confirmed.
“Today's implementation of UTP marks a significant positive step towards the promotion of trust in the market and increasing the efficiency of the services provided to investors and providing a trading platform for new products and investment instruments to be launched by Qatar Exchange,” said Andre Went, Qatar Exchange chief executive officer. “Both issuers and investors alike will benefit form the speed, efficiency and reliability of NYSE Euronext's world class technology, together with greater market transparency resulting from the introduction of a closing auction.”
“This launch also marks an important step in the history of the Qatari markets with the introduction of new order types, order parameters and closing auction thus improving efficiency and transparency and attracting a diverse investor base,” he added.
The move follows the establishment in the last 12 months of the Central Bank of Qatar as settlement bank, the granting of government permission allowing Qatari banks to join the exchange and modification to the Qatar Exchange's index. The launch of UTP in Qatar is the first use of the NYSE Euronext cash trading application suite outside its own core markets in Europe and the US. UTP is expected to offer market participants in Qatar trading roundtrips of less than one millisecond.