ZSE on verge of a ATS deal

Published: 11 December 2013

THE Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE) will later this month reach an agreement with a winning bidder to supply and install the Automated Trading System at the bourse.

Bids for the Automated Trading System (ATS) project have been received by the ZSE from four vendors namely, Chartered Systems Intergration, InfoTech Middle East FFZ-LC, National Stock Exchange of India, and New York Stock Exchange Euronext.

"Two out of the four bidders were invited for presentations and system 'demos', to enable final selection. It is expected that an agreement will be reached with the selected vendor this month. This will pave way for initial work on the installation of the ATS," said the ZSE in its monthly newsletter.

A majority of stock exchanges in different parts of the world including Africa have already moved to electronic trading.

The ZSE operations executive Martin Matanda was quoted in the newsletter saying the automated system makes electronic order routing possible as well as facilitating broader dissemination of quote and trade information.

"This eliminates the need for direct person-to-person contact via the trading floor. With the current manual system, member representatives meet at the ZSE trading floor each day between 10am and 11am. Traders submit their bids and offers, with a trade being executed when an agreement is reached between parties. An official from the ZSE acts as the 'auctioneer' - the typical 'open out-cry' auction," he said.

He said they were presently receiving a number of enquiries by Zimbabweans in the Diaspora but it has not been possible to convert the enquiries into meaningful orders due to lack of infrastructure at the stock exchange.

"We believe that the installation of the ATS will greatly help the efforts to harness Diaspora funds and increase our market share from the retail segment by enabling mobile and internet-based technologies for transacting."

"The ZSE currently carries out a large number of tasks manually using excel and other basic packages. All our requirements will be incorporated in the Automated Trading System to eliminate the manual processing and distribution of data.

"The role of ZSE staff will be transformed to mainly focus on ensuring there are no exceptions to what is expected to take place routinely," said Matanda.

It is also hoped that automation will make the market more attractive resulting in the growth of volumes.

The modernisation effort of the ZSE is also expected to go a long way in creating more business for the stock exchange's members and attracting foreign funds into the country as this will be achieved by establishing securities market infrastructure comparable to any found elsewhere in the world.
- chronicle