The Hindu Business Line : Interconnected SE opens branch in Hyderabad

INTERCONNECTED Stock Exchange of India Ltd, formed by 14 regional stock exchanges, has opened its fifth branch here today and plans to commission three more by the end of this financial year.

The other three branches would come up at Ahmedabad, Kanpur and Bangalore and complement the existing ones at Delhi serving the North, Kolkata (East), Nagpur (Central) and Coimbatore (South). Hyderabad was chosen due to its potential.

The Managing Director of the stock exchange, Mr V. Shankar, who was here for opening the centre, told Business Line that the exchange was in the process of restructuring its operations and would rope in strategic partners by the end of this financial year.

This move is based on the SEBI directive to dilute the holding in the stock exchanges.

"We are in the process of implementing corporatisation strategy. The restructure process is aimed at broadbasing the services provided to investors. If you look at the trading patterns, top 200 companies account for majority of the trades. About 1,800 of the 2,000 scrips traded, particularly mid-cap go un-represented in the overall trades," he said.

"As a part of the strategy, the exchange is in the process of compiling data from all these 1,800-odd companies that would be useful for investors, portfolio mangers and serve as a repository of information that can be accessed any time. This would broad base the trade patterns. It is something everybody would like it to be," he explained.

"As a part of the SEBI directive, we have embarked on a process of identifying strategic partners who would complement our role in reaching out access to stock exchange. Owned by 14 regional stock exchanges, we would have to dilute part of the holding with 2-3 partners who would complement our work," he said.

The restructured entity would serve as a single point service provider for trading as a platform, investor awareness programmes and offer dematerialisation services.