The Ljubljana Stock Exchange introduces SI ENTER Market, the first multilateral trading facility in Slovenia
Introducing the SI ENTER Market, the Ljubljana Stock Exchange (LjSE) offers the first Multilateral Trading Facility (MTF) in Slovenia. The new SI ENTER Market has two segments:
- ENTER Basic lists the shares upon proposal by its members. 76 shares, which have so far been traded on the OTC market, are now listed in this segment. Investors are thus able to trade the securities of companies from diverse sectors of the Slovenian economy.
- ENTER Advance lists the securities upon the interest of issuers.
LjSE started with this project last October. Final versions of the amendments and supplements to the LjSE Rules, which were necessary for implementation, were prepared in December. The Securities Market Agency approved the Rules on 3 February and they went into effect 15 days later. The first trades on the SI ENTER Market were executed on 8 March.
There are two main reasons for the LjSE to introduce MTF trading platform. The first is to increase investment possibilities and improve trading transparency, which would raise the capital market to a higher level. More than one third of trading with shares in Slovenia is still executed on the OTC market. The second reason is to terminate registry accounts as owners of securities have many non-tradable securities on them. The LjSE offers the accounts’ owners the possibility to trade with such securities.
The trades on SI ENTER Market are executed on the LjSE trading platform XETRA as securities listed on LjSE. SI ENTER Market trades are settled as OTC trades and settlement protection measures, valid for “on market” trades, don’t apply to these trades. Aleš Ipavec, CEO of LjSE has stated that together with the KDD, LjSE is upgrading the system, which will ease the settlement process.
Currently none of the securities are listed in the ENTER Advance segment. But the main effort of LjSE was to list a wide range of companies on the ENTER Basic segment to attract investors.
It looks like that with a new owner of LjSE, Zagreb Stock Exchange and a new CEO, appointed in September 2016, the LjSE has turned in a new positive direction.
Vanda Močnik Kohek
Senior Relationship Manager