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“Of the 79 records filed with the Bolsa de Madrid’s Ombudsman in 2003, a third were resolved by mutual agreement. Only 11% were solved in this way in 2002”, said Carlos Fernández, Bolsa de Madrid’s Ombudsman during its presentation about the Ombudsman 2003 Report today.
Complaints filed in 2003 followed the same pattern as those in the previous year. There were few records filed due to the preventive action taken by the Ombudsman and, in a large part, to the small number of new IPOs, a factor very closely linked to these complaints. There was a lack of conflict in most of the records filed and only four of them had to be resolved through arbitration.
As for the informative work carried out by the Ombudsman, there were 41,200 enquiries in 2003 in comparison with 40,560 in the preceding year. Those made by retail investors accounted for 45% of all, in contrast with 37% in the previous year.
During the presentation about its report, the Ombudsman said that there had been a greater presence of investors in the stock market in 2003, which evidences that their interest in information necessary for decision taking has increased.
Since the creation of the Ombudsman office in 1991, the stated objective has been to offer investors greater security and transparency. The work carried out by the Ombudsman is mainly confined to two relevant ambits, namely, the informative and the preventive and conciliatory.
