Following last month’s announcement about the establishment of HKMEx, a Hong Kong-based commodities exchange, Financial Technologies has revealed plans to establish a similar venture in Singapore. Indian-based Financial Technologies, which specialises in the establishment and operation of exchanges, has said that its new exchange will complement the country’s OTC trading of commodities.

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The Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) is planning to offer traders the ability to place their trading systems closer to its data centre via its co-location hosting service, which is due to launch in the last quarter of this year.

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The infrastructure supporting Singapore Exchange’s (SGX) proximity hosting service, which is being offered in partnership with Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel), will go fully operational this August and make SGX the first exchange in the Asia Pacific region to offer traders sub-millisecond access to its trading engines.

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The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) plans to upgrade its Securities Market Automated Research Trading and Surveillance (Smarts) system to version 6.1 of the Smarts Market Integrity Platform. The system, which monitors all real-time trading information and highlights any unusual price or volume movements, will thus gain additional capacity and functionality.

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Following the upgrade of its trading system last year, New Zealand’s stock exchange NZX has revealed plans to expand into stock index and stock futures during 2008. Stuart Turner, head of strategy and delivery at NZX, reckons the time is right for the exchange to look to new instruments.

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J-Oil Exchange (JOX) has deployed Trayport’s GlobalVision Exchange Trading System, enabling existing and new members to integrate with the exchange. The implementation maintains JOX’s existing bilateral settlement mechanism and provides the ability to support cleared products across multiple asset classes on a single server application throughout Asia.

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A new Australian stock exchange focused on technology and innovation stocks launched on Wednesday 26 March, with plans to become fully operational by the second half of 2008, media sources report.

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The Stock Exchange of Thailand’s (SET’s) proposals this week to explore demutualisation, the creation of more product variety and the exploitation of niche markets to support the Thai capital market in an era of fierce global pressure (AsiaMarketsIT.com, March 26 2008) has received a positive response from securities companies trading on SET – but more needs to be done, warn the bourse’s users.

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Plans for the acquisition of Jasdaq, Japan’s biggest market for start-ups, by the Osaka Securities Exchange (OSE) have hit a hurdle, with Jasdaq rejecting plans to merge its operations with its suitor – thought to be a key component of the OSE’s proposed purchase of a 73 per cent stake in the securities exchange.

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The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) is looking at demutualisation, privatisation, or the listing of SET on the stock market to make it more competitive in an ever more tight global market, the bourse’s chairman Pakorn Malakul na Ayudhya told the SET-organised seminar Surviving the Intensified Global Capital Market Competition on March 25.

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Korea Exchange (KRX) is set to expand its tech-heavy secondary market, Kosdaq (Korean Securities Dealers Association’s Automated Quotations), pledged Lee Jung-hwan as he was sworn in as the bourse’s chief executive for a second term.

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The Iranian and Indonesian capital markets have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU), initiating what the two exchanges see as “more friendly co-operation among two important Muslim Nations”.

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The Singapore Exchange has agreed in principle to buy a stake “of at least 95%” through the subscription of shares in the Singapore Commodity Exchange (Sicom) for around S$7.5 million. Sicom provides a marketplace for commodity futures, focusing on rubber. Its computerised trading network links market makers and brokers, providing them with a price discovery system. Futures contracts transacted between buyers and sellers are cleared through Sicom’s clearing house. The acquisition - subject to regulatory approval and the consent of Sicom’s shareholders - is expected to be completed by the end of June 2008. Both exchanges have recently signed deals with Swedish technology group and exchange operator OMX. Sicom is rolling out a new Web-based trading and clearing platform for commodity derivatives which is slated for launch in Q3 2008.

The Osaka Securities Exchange and International Securities Exchange Holdings have agreed to build a cooperative relationship as the first step towards the formation of a joint venture and the launch of a new, jointly owned trading platform with which they hope to revitalise the Japanese equity options market.

The Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) is on balance “more likely than less” to participate in future consolidation moves among exchanges in one form or another, Robert Elstone, ASX managing director and CEO, has indicated.

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The Tokyo Commodity Exchange (TOCOM) and the Osaka Securities Exchange (OSE) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on co-operation between the two exchanges. The exchanges will explore the possibility of co-operation by holding discussions in the areas of infrastructure, including electronic trading platforms, and joint marketing targeted at investors, as well as by sharing ideas on the joint development of new products and services.

NYSE Euronext (NYX) is making its first investment in a commodity exchange in Asia, acquiring a five per cent equity position in India’s Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX). The equity investment is the maximum permitted by foreign investors in derivative exchanges under current Indian law and sees NYX join, among others, State Bank of India, Bank of India, Citibank and Merrill Lynch as a stake holder in the exchange.

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Tokyo Stock Exchange’s president and CEO Atsushi Saito has issued an apology for the failure of the exchange’s new Derivatives Trading System on Friday February 8 and says the problem is now fixed. “We at the TSE once again wish to express our deepest regret for the inconvenience caused to investors and many others involved in the market as a result of the derivatives system malfunction that occurred on February 8,” the CEO says in a statement. After a thorough investigation of the system had been conducted, necessary program correction was completed by Monday, February 11, with all the contracts including TOPIX Futures March 2008 contracts traded normally from the morning of Tuesday February 12.

The Shenzhen Stock Exchange and the Singapore Exchange (SGX) have signed a co-operation pact on information exchange in the areas of personnel training, product development and business and technical co-operation. The two exchanges have agreed to establish a joint workforce to facilitate the process of co-operation between them.

The Indonesia Stock Exchange and the Tehran Stock Exchange have signed a memorandum of understanding, under which they will co-operate on electronic trading, market surveillance procedures, issuer surveillance, reporting systems and information dissemination between the two exchanges. The parties hope the MoU will help to support the development of the capital markets in both their countries.