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Qatar Exchange has reached a major mile-stone in its drive to develop in Doha a world class financial center by launching the Universal Trading Platform, with the system successfully going live at the start of trading yesterday.
The introduction of the Universal Trading Platform means that the country’s cash equities exchange will operate with the same state-of-the-art technology as NYSE Euronext, the global trading group and strategic partner of the Qatar Exchange since June 2009.
The move represents a significant step forward in the development of Qatar Exchange, laying firm foundations to realize the State of Qatar’s strategic vision for the market to act as a global exchange, working in accordance with the best international practices and standards.
Qatar Exchange now has an important piece of the infrastructure to work towards expanding the capabilities of the market with new products such as bonds and other diversified exchange traded instruments.
The announcement caps a year of progress towards achieving the five year development of the Qatar Exchange project which has also seen the Central Bank of Qatar act as Settlement Bank; Government permission to allow Qatari banks to join the Exchange, and modification to the Qatar Exchange’s index.
HE Dr. Khalid bin Mohammad Al Attiyah, Minister of State for International Cooperation and Chairman of QE’s Board, expressed his deep satisfaction with this major step, being a milestone in the development strategy aiming at turning QE into a world-class exchange. HE Dr. Al Attiyah also extended his heartfelt gratitude and appreciation to HH Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah Al Thani, Emir of the State of Qatar, and Heir Apparent, HH Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani for their wise directions and constant support of the endeavors aiming at developing the Qatar Exchange in line with the ambitious economic vision of the State of Qatar. HE also expressed his gratitude to HE Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jabor Al Thani, Vice Chairman and CEO of Qatar Investment Authority, for his continuous support aiming to align QE with the best international practices in the world of exchanges.
Andre Went, Qatar Exchange Chief Executive Officer said: “Today’s implementation of UTP marks a significant positive step towards the promotion of trust in the market and increasing the efficiency of the services provided to investors and providing a trading platform for new products and investment instruments to be launched by Qatar Exchange. Both issuers and investors alike will benefit from the speed, efficiency and reliability of NYSE Euronext’s world class technology, together with greater market transparency resulting from the introduction of a closing auction. Launching UTP on schedule and in line with our stated strategy is a clear demonstration of the benefits of the strategic partnership between Qatar Holding and NYSE Euronext.”
He added: “the Universal Trading Platform will play an essential role in Qatar Exchange’s progression towards establishing a world class market, listing diversified investment products. This launch also marks an important step in the history of the Qatari market with the introduction of new order types, order parameters and closing auction thus improving efficiency and transparency and attracting a diverse investor base”.
Dominique Cerutti, President & Deputy Chief Executive of NYSE Euronext said: “This achievement illustrates the progress of our partnership with Qatar, our joint commitment to innovation and the close working relationship between our two organizations. We are delighted at this important first step and welcome the opportunity to apply our leading-edge technology to transform the Qatar Exchange into a marketplace that is well positioned to serve market participants in the Middle East and the world”.
As next steps the Qatar Exchange will leverage the new regulatory framework and the leading edge technology to launch new products for its cash market and enhance its connectivity via SFTI to the NYSE Euronext global community, thereby tapping into NYSE Euronext's liquidity network. Further into the future, we expect to see the launch of a derivatives market in Qatar.
The successful launch of the Universal Trading Platform for the Qatar Exchange is the first launch of the NYSE Euronext cash trading application suite outside its own core markets. The platform incorporates new state-of-the-art technology, providing outstanding value to customers and setting new benchmarks in terms of scalability, capacity, ultra-low latency, new functionalities and resiliency.
In terms of benefits for market participants, the Universal Trading Platform offers extremely low latency (less than one millisecond). It also uses internationally recognized protocols for order routing, thereby providing seamless integration with participants across the globe. As part of this initiative, Qatar Exchange has also commissioned a Disaster Recovery back-up data center in partnership with Qatar Telecom. This secondary data center is now active with the Universal Trading Platform installed and brokers are being systematically connected.
