Stocks soar as PSE starts trade at new BGC office

The Philippine Stock Exchange has finally started trading activities at its new headquarters at the PSE Tower in the Bonifacio Global City on the first trading day after the Lunar New Year.

“As we move to our new office at the Bonifacio Global City, we shall embark on recording new history for the stock market and for our country,” said PSE Chairman Jose T. Pardo.

He noted that, “for the first time, traders from the old Manila Stock Exchange and the old Makati Stock Exchange now share one trading floor. What better place to witness this unification and to pursue our aspirations to become a world-class exchange than here at the world-class Bonifacio Global City, one of the most modern and progressive places in the country.”

The transfer to its new offices signifies the first time the bourse is physically unified, 25 years after the it was born from the merger of the then Manila Stock Exchange and the Makati Stock Exchange.

While the MSE and MKSE were merged into a single entity two and a half decades ago, it had operated two trading floors, each of which housed certain PSE offices, to take advantage of donations of office properties by Philippine Realty and Holdings Corporation and Ayala Land Inc. which were hinged on the PSE actualy using occupying them for 10 years.

Even before the 10 year condition had expired, Fort Bonifacio Development Corporation (then controlled by Metro Pacific Investments Corporation) donated to the PSE a new site in the central business district it was developing.

However, the transfer to the new site face countless delays including the sale of MPIC’s stake in FBDC to ALI. It eventually agreed with ALI on a new site and the construction of a R3.5 billion, grade AAA multi-tower building located on a 3.2-hectare property.

The new building is located at 5th Street corner 28th Avenue in BGC. The building has an external ticker board on its façade that displays real-time stock prices and market data.

It will also house a museum which will feature various mementos that will showcase the rich history of the PSE and its predecessor bourses.

The Lunar New Year at the new PSE office is off to a good start with its first trading day seeing local stocks pushing up the PSE index 97.78 points or 1.14 percent to 8,710.22 with all sectoral indices in the green.

A total of 7.35 million