Reuters: Hot Stocks: W.Africa bourse pushes for tie-up with neighbours

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W.Africa bourse pushes for tie-up with neighbours Nov 30th 2012, 16:05 ABIDJAN | Fri Nov 30, 2012 11:05am EST ABIDJAN Nov 30 (Reuters) - West Africa's BRVM Bourse will extend trading hours and encourage smaller firms to list as part of a drive to improve its performance and promote a tie-up with neighbouring exchanges, its new director said on Friday. The Ivory Coast-based bourse began trading in 1998 and lists nearly 40 companies mainly from French-speaking West Africa, but has been overshadowed by more dynamic stock exchanges in Anglophone Ghana and Nigeria. The three markets have been working for several years to integrate their exchanges, though no timetable has yet been set for the fusion. "The BRVM will participate actively in the integration of the three stock markets," Edoh Kossi Amenounve, who was named the bourse's new director on Oct. 1, told Reuters in an interview. Amenounve plans to implement a six-hour trading day - the BRVM is currently open from 9 to 10.45 AM local time - and expand the number of traded companies. In particular, he plans to set up a second-tier exchange to encourage listings from small and medium-sized enterprises across the West African Economic and Monetary Union - an eight nation group of mainly French speaking countries which uses the CFA franc as its currency. Amenounve said he would also push for some listed companies to improve the availability of their shares by splitting their stock into cheaper chunks, as Senegalese telecoms company Sonatel's did on Nov. 23. Sonatel, whose share price had risen beyond the range of many investors, conducted a 10-for-1 stock split to 14,000 CFA last Friday. Stock splits have been historically rare on the West African exchange. Several banks from the CFA franc zone plan to join the exchange in the coming year, Amenounve said, though he declined to name them, and several companies already listed plan to increase their capital. Turnover from October 2011 to October 2012 was 123.5 billion CFA francs ($244.3 million), up from 54.1 billion the previous year when a post-election crisis disrupted economic activity in Ivory Coast, the region's largest economy. ($1 = 505.4180 CFA francs) (Reporting by Loucoumane Coulibaly; Editing by Joe Bavier and Mark Potter) Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

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