NZX originally proposed a CCH to allow access to shareholder balance information and to record settled trades during the course of a trading day, when repeated problems with accessing registry information led to a series of market outages during 2003.
Since the 2003 market outages NZX has invested heavily in technology to improve market reliability. The registries have also advised NZX that they have committed to technology improvements.
“NZX has consulted widely with interested parties including registries, issuers, sub-custodians and NZX Firms. We have agreed not to proceed with the CCH at this time, in order to give registries the opportunity they sought to demonstrate the effectiveness of improvements they have made to their technology,” said NZX Head of Regulatory and Public Policy Elaine Campbell.
“The availability and reliability of New Zealand markets is critical to NZX. We will hold the registries accountable for those improvements via a robust set of service level agreements,” said Campbell.
NZX will monitor the situation for 12 months before it makes a final decision on provision of a CCH facility.
