Malta’s Growing Economy: Out-Performing its Peers
Cliff Pace of Malta Stock Exchange explains how the country’s growing economy has made it a hot spot for overseas investors.
Malta has managed to maintain significant growth over the last years because we are a very open economy, that has all the right basic fundamentals such as good government financing, a clear strategy to attract international business to our shores, as well as domestic growth that is fuelled by a strong entrepreneurial spirit. The can- do attitude is supported by a sound framework of financial services and highly professional and cost effective professional services.
Company: Malta Stock Exchange Name: Cliff Pace Email: cpace@borzamalta.com.mt Web Address: www.borzamalta.com.mt Address: Malta Stock Exchange, Garrison Chapel, Castille Square, Valletta Telephone: (00356) 21244051
www.acquisition-intl.com
At The Malta Stock Exchange we provide a structure for admission to listing of financial instruments on the main or alternate EU regulated markets, which may subsequently be traded on the secondary market. The MSE also offers a comprehensive range of Central Securities Depository services, clearing and settlement and custodial services. We have supported the local capital market requirements for almost five years – attracting over €18bn through domestic IPOs that were funded mostly by Maltese retail investors. This was supported by very efficient operations that ensured that the confidence in the market, from both the issuer and the investor side, remained strong, in spite of difficulties in the markets near us. This successful strategy is being complemented by aggressive business development efforts to attract international business, as well as new product development, such as Prospects, an SME oriented capital markets product that should be launched in early 2016.
The fact that Malta are a small economy has created the need to have a strong level of efficiency and creativity amongst the business community and the support services in order to compete. This is compounded by high levels of networking, very good turnaround times, and quality of service at very competitive prices, amongst others. Of course, the problems of being small is that we do not often enjoy the economies of scale that our larger counterparts have, which implies that we need to be that much more efficient and effective in what we do, however technology is an excellent enabler in this regard and we are catching up to larger economies. Being a small community also has its advantages for a firm such as ours, as we are able to keep in touch with our stakeholders, enablers, the Regulator, local Government and customers, and we strive to ensure that our culture of ‘getting it done - well’ is visible, and tangible in what we do. Currently, we are on track to breaking the €1.2bn worth of trade in 2015, and should close the year at a market capitalisation of over €11.2bn. New IPOs are steadily coming to market, and product and business development initiatives should start to bear fruit. We hope to see the new Prospect product launched in Q1 of 2016 which will be a very interesting product for both Maltese SMEs as well as international SMEs.
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