6 September 2007
editorial
Johannesburg — THE JSE's opportunities in Africa are huge. While Nasdaq, the Nordic exchange OMX, the London Stock Exchange, Deutsche Bourse, Dubai and others slog it out for pieces of the biggest pies, Africa sits quietly. It has some great companies on some dodgy exchanges. To create a central platform, or to buy those exchanges that are saleable, will put the first mover in a strong position when the developed world has exhausted itself with itself. It will be like the gold rush, like the mobile rush and like the rush to adopt malnourished babies in the race to look cool -- Africa will one day be the last place sporting untapped capital markets.
It would seem JSE CE Russell Loubser has been strategic about this for a long time. He has courted African countries and has had two of them accepted on to the World Federation of Exchanges. He was making friends while others were looking the other way. This should pay off for the JSE as long as it doesn't have to pay too much for the pleasure of finding synergies amid securities in Africa.
Although Loubser said yesterday there were no imminent announcements, the snapping up of African opportunities cannot be left for a year or two. Developed markets move swiftly and are hungry for growth. They will no doubt be watching Loubser's moves with interest in between bouts of infighting.
And although one believes the rest of Africa is not quite as enamoured with SA's financial prowess as SA is, the JSE may have an advantage in that it is at least an African exchange and understands markets across the continent better than any outsider. The way things stand now it looks like the JSE will end up buying the Mauritian stock exchange and then maybe creating an African trading platform so that exchanges such as Nigeria and Zambia, which haven't demutualised, can take part.
But others have also had this latter idea. The JSE, which hopefully has the resources to put all of its plans in place, had better move fast.
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