Regulation

RULE CHANGES

We are committed to maintaining high standards of regulation through rules that are effective and progressive. Our rules are based on international standards and administered in a fair and consistent manner. We review our regulatory framework regularly, given the ever changing capital market landscape.

Whilst our rules promote market integrity and investor protection, we are mindful to ensure they do not impede market development. We strive to achieve a balance between market development and market regulation, at all times. In this respect, we adopt a consultative approach where we seek market feedback and input for all material rule changes through a public consultation process. This process is essential to ensure that the rules are effective, relevant and serve the intended purpose.

This year, rule changes were made in three broad areas namely:

• introduction of new products, services and infrastructure;
• enhancement to our regulatory framework in the areas of CG and risk management; and
• enhancement to the quality of our market place by improving market expediency, diversity and accessibility

From a listing standpoint, the consolidation of the Main and Second Boards will result in the creation of a Unified Board which enables listing of established companies with strong financial track records. The MESDAQ Market revamp will allow smaller companies to have speedier access to the capital market for capital raising. Our LR are currently being amended to accommodate the changes.

TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT

We also embarked on several IT projects to improve our technological infrastructure. On the surveillance front, we have launched our new Equities Surveillance System or ARAMIS in December in 2008. This replaces our previous surveillance system and was delivered together with our trading platform developed by NYSE Euronext Technology SAS, which also developed our Derivatives Surveillance System. The new surveillance system has stronger analytical capability, sophisticated alerts and can be exported into office applications. It also facilitates a single platform for both equities and derivatives surveillance and therefore, inter market surveillance.

Enhancements were made to our automated minimum financial requirements reporting mechanism or better known as ARMADA system. This involved improving sensitivity in capturing risk arising from volatile price changes to enable a more timely and effective supervision of Participants. Bursa LINK, the platform for announcement of listed issuers' information was also enhanced to facilitate speedier submission of information by listed issuers for dissemination to the market place.