CSE demutualisation gets Cabinet nod

The Cabinet has agreed to transform the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE), now a non-profit organisation owned and managed by its members, to a profit oriented shareholders-owned company.

Demutualisation is the process by which an existing member-owned, mutually operated, non-for-profit stock exchange is changed into a shareholder-owned, commercially operated, for-profit corporate entity. It segregates ownership and management from trading rights of the members of an exchange. In due course, the demutualised stock exchange itself may be listed, and its shares traded on the stock exchange.

On Wednesday the cabinet of Ministers approved the proposal presented by Mangala Samaraweera, Minister of Finance and Mass media to amend the bill drafted to change legal status of the Colombo Stock Exchange.

Demutualisation has been discussed for more than a decade, with officials saying that it’s about time something actually happened.

This process was slowing down for a while last year owing to the dissent between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and brokers over the percentage that the latter should own after demutualisation.

Sri Lanka has had a number of capital market development plans in the past. They include, among others, the SEC Capital Market Master Plan ( 2006), the CSE Mckenzie Plan ( 2012), the SEC Capital Market Development Road Map ( 2012), and the SEC 20/ 20 Vision ( 2014). The contents of these plans provide insights into a range of objectives the capital market policy makers proposed to accomplish through implementation of various initiatives.