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Palestine Exchange to List Its Own Shares

The Palestine Exchange (PEX), which makes a market for shares in 46 local companies with a combined market capitalization of $2.9 billion, is on its way to becoming a publicly traded stock itself.

Shares in the PEX will begin trading on the Ramallah-based exchange April 4, the 15th anniversary of its founding, after Palestine Development & Investment Company, PEX’s biggest shareholder, has sold the first of a planned two million shares. When all the shares are sold, a process that could take up to a year, the public will hold about 20% of the exchange.

The initial public offering (IPO) comes at a tough time for the PEX and the other stock exchanges of the Middle East and North Africa, which have seen prices and volume decline in the face of the global financial crisis followed by the political turmoil of the Arab Spring.

But Ahmad Aweidah, PEX’s chief executive officer, told The Media Line that the Palestinian bourse had weathered the crises relatively well and that investors in the IPO stood good upside prospects that would be leveraged by new revenue streams that the exchange is developing.

“You’re coming into the exchange when it’s at bottom of the cycle, so the only way is up from here on,” Aweidah said. “In spite of the decline in trading revenue in the last three years, we are not making huge losses. We’ve grown other revenue sources aside from trading and we’ve managed to keep expenses more or less stable in the last three years.”
http://www.themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=34771 [3]