LSE may promote investment in Azerbaijan - official
By Nigar Orujova
The London Stock Exchange (LSE), with extensive resources, and the Baku Stock Exchange (BSE), having considerable knowledge of the local market, can provide a good platform for investing in Azerbaijan, an official of the State Committee for Securities has said.
"Business entities in need of greater financial resources and investors with spare cash can cooperate effectively. The stock market is a good platform for this. Cooperation of the LSE and BSE will be interesting to all local companies," Emin Muradov, the Committee's head of market research and development, told the "Raising Capital in Baku and London: New Opportunities" seminar in Baku on Tuesday.
BSE Board Chairman Emin Aliyev said at the workshop that issues of future cooperation with the LSE and drawing foreign investors through dual-listing "are new and potentially viable".
"The BSE has a number of strategic development directions, including automation of all processes, risk management, promoting the listing and development of domestic resources. There are no restrictions on access of foreign investors to the Azerbaijani stock market," Aliyev said.
According to the LSE's development manager Maksim Kondratyuk, the LSE aims to develop cooperation with the BSE in order to help Azerbaijani companies attract stable and inexpensive capital.
"Azerbaijan has a very interesting market and involves interesting companies," Kondratyuk said. "The LSE is successfully cooperating with companies from the CIS; more than 150 companies from countries in this region, such as Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, are registered on the stock exchange...Currently, about 16 percent of trading on the LSE accounts for CIS companies. In 2013, this figure will reach 20 percent."
According to Kondratyuk, the LSE would like to assist Azerbaijan in developing relevant infrastructure to enable investors to make direct investments in local companies and in creating new products.