Doha: The Qatar Financial Markets Authority (QFMA) issued yesterday its new rulebook “Offering & Listing of Securities on the Financial Markets Rulebook”. The issuance comes as a part of its regulatory and supervisory role over the Qatari capital market sector, so that the procedures and requirements for offering and listing are available to a larger segment of companies.
This new issuance comes within the continuous development and update of capital market regulations and legislation, and in line with the global development of this vital sector, as well the needs of the capital market sector in the State.
The key issues included in the new rulebook is the standardization of both requirements for offering and listing in of the two main and second markets and the regulation of relationship between them through adding requirements for transferring the listing of companies from the main market to the second market, with the aim of increasing the correlation between the two markets, activating trading and listing in the second market, and promoting the standards for the continued listing of companies in the main market. The rulebook will be implemented as of the date April 1, 2021.
Chief Executive Officer of Qatar Stock Exchange, Rashid bin Ali Al Mansoori, welcomed the new measures by QFMA.
“The new rulebook standardizes the offering & listing requirements of the main and second markets in order to promote trading & listing. It also allows direct listing without IPO in both markets and includes various controls to increase transparency & improve disclosure practices,” said Rashid bin Ali Al Mansoori, in a tweet yesterday.
The new rulebook also included allowing direct listing without going public offering “IPO” in both markets, and adding some modern mechanisms based on the best international practices related to securities public offering, suiting the local market and contributing to finding several alternatives for pricing of public offering for shares, such as book building mechanism. It also included providing the opportunity for companies that offer their shares in a public offering to the public to use the proper mechanisms to maintain price stability for shares.
The new rulebook also included many controls that contribute to increasing the transparency and raising disclosure level particularly in the main market, in line with modern technological changes in this regard.
The QFMA hopes that implementing this new rulebook will increase the number of the listed companies, their shares’ turnover rates, the liquidity volume, the activation of the second market and the encouragement of its listing, as well as will contribute to increasing the relative weight of Qatari companies in international investment indicators and attracts more investments to the Qatari capital market.
