Dr R Seetharaman, Group CEO of Doha Bank, giving a keynote speech during the workshop at Doha Bank yesterday. Shaival Dalal
BY MOHAMMAD SHOEB
DOHA: Doha Bank in partnership with the Qatar Exchange (QE) yesterday hosted a workshop aiming to educate the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) about the modalities and conditions of being listed on the “QE Venture Market” (Shouk Al Sharikat Al Nashiaa, in Arabic), commonly know as the junior market.
The SMEs and family businesses aspiring to get listed on the QE Venture Market are required to fulfill a host of basic conditions including a minimum subscription capital of QR5m. For capitalization, minimum of 50 percent of the nominal value must be paid by the promoters of the company, and in the case of public offering, it is required to be 100 percent.
According to the website, the QE Venture Market fee schedule is to be finalized. But sources in QE said that there will be a fixed amount of fee nearly QR50, 000 at a significant discount to that of the Main Market to reflect the nature of SMEs involved.
It has to be a joint-stock company with commercial registration from the Ministry of Business and Trade, Qatar. And on the track record front, the company must produce one year track record of core business requirement and issued audited financial statement for that year, and they must be drawn up in accordance with international accounting standards. More details about the listing requirements are available online at the QE Venture Market’s website: http://www.qe.com.qa/qeventuremarket/index.html
The workshop also highlighted the opportunities for SMEs seeking to be part of the junior market, which joins the QE Main Market and is a revolutionary new opportunity for small and medium business to pursue their bold entrepreneurial visions and also benefit from the access to capital that being listed entails.
Present at the workshop were Dr R Seetharaman, Doha Bank Group CEO; Abdulaziz Al Emadi, Listing Director at QE; Krishnaswami Vanketesh, Partner at KPMG, Colin Milton, Deputy Director of Listing at QE and others.
Companies on the QE Venture Market will trade on the same Universal Trading Platform (UTP) infrastructure used by the QE Main Market, and also benefit from the same regulatory safeguards as that afforded to Main Market companies. The Venture Market will clearly be identifiable as a separate and dedicated marketplace tailored to the needs of small and medium companies.
Dr Seetharaman said: “The QE Venture Market is a showcase of home-grown entrepreneurship and is specifically tailored to meet the needs of SMEs seeking to grow their business organically and require a regulated framework within which they can ply their trade and benefit from access to the financial support and advisory services that are more easily available to listed companies.”
He added: “Doha Bank is committed to working alongside SMEs and developing structured and personalised solutions for their needs. The Bank offers solutions that go beyond the actual transaction which includes top-down financial advisory services covering strategic projects, insurance and risk management.”
Al Emadi said: “The diminishing availability of growth capital is now hitting the SME sector at the same time as the international community is becoming more aware of the need for maintaining and stimulating national growth. In the end one solution will most likely be that national economies must stimulate growth in the SME sector by making capital easily available.”
He clarified that the criteria set specifically for SMEs are different from the currently applicable requirements for listing companies in the main market.
The Peninsula
