Oslo Børs is now a public limited company with external shareholders, and is expected to charge commercial market prices for the services it offers. The changes to be introduced from the start of next year represent an adjustment towards the level of fees charged by other exchanges. The fees charged by Oslo Børs will still only represent a small proportion of the total costs incurred by investors when trading in shares and primary capital certificates. Today fees charged for trading in shares and primary capital certificates account for slightly over 10% of total operating revenue for Oslo Børs.
The revised pricing structure will introduce minimum fees for transactions with a value of less than NOK 500,000. A transaction with a value of up to NOK 50,000 will in future incur a fee of NOK 5.00 rather than the NOK 3.38 currently paid by the broking firm. A transaction with a value between NOK 50,000 - NOK 100,000 will incur a fee of NOK 7.50 (currently up to NOK 4.05). The equivalent figure for a transaction in the range NOK 100,000 - NOK 500,000 will be NOK 12.50 (currently up to NOK 9.45).
The fees charged on transactions in excess of NOK 500,000 will be made up of a transaction fee of NOK 4.00 (currently NOK 2.70) and a trading fee of NOK 20.00 per million of traded value (currently NOK 13.50).
The level of fees currently charged by Oslo Børs is well below the fees charged by, for example, the other member exchanges of the Norex Alliance.
The following table provides a comparison of the fees currently charged by Oslo Børs as compared to the Stockholm and Copenhagen exchanges.
| Oslo | Stockholm (1) | Copenhagen (1) | |
| Transaction fee | 2.70 | 4.45 | 4.10 |
| Trading fee per million | 13.50 | 39.00 | 42.00 |
(1) Average fee before discounts.
The new fee structure for trading would have increased the exchange´s operating revenue for the third quarter of 2001 by just over NOK 4 million.
Oslo Børs also intends to increase the upper limit for the listing fee from NOK 600,000 to NOK 1 million. This will only affect companies that have a market capitalisation in excess of NOK 10 billion at 31 December 2001. As of 8 November 2001 there were 12 listed companies with market capitalisation in excess of NOK 10 billion.
