MARKETPLACE REPORT: FAIR AND ORDERLY MARKET

Bursa Malaysia has an obligation to ensure that our markets operate in a fair and orderly manner at all times. These are built on strong fundamentals, backed by robust regulatory frameworks and approaches, and supported by cutting-edge technology to ensure effective and efficient operation. Our listed issuers and intermediaries have shown high level of adherence to our rules, with the latter also being sufficiently capitalised and adhering to high standards of business conduct and prudential standards, providing adequate levels of investor protection. The Exchange has also put in place various market safeguards to protect the integrity and stability of the marketplace. These market features are designed in line with best international practices.

Our markets continue to display high levels of transparency to facilitate informed investments. We have not observed any unusual activities/trends that threaten market integrity for the year under review.

We continued to enhance our rules framework to build a market of quality, strengthen investor protection and ensure that our rules remained current and effective. In 2015, we issued several rule changes governing the listed issuers and our intermediaries. The key changes included:

• Changes to enhance business efficacy and efficiency for listed issuers as well as to enhance the attractiveness of the ACE Market as a listing destination.
• Changes to promote sustainability practices and reporting among our listed issuers.
• Changes to promote certainty in trading and minimise disruptions (i.e. changes to give effect to Bursa Malaysia’s error trade policy).
• Changes to achieve compliance or consistency with changes to the law and Securities Commission guidelines that came into effect or were amended during the year (e.g. the changes in relation to the Financial Services Act 2013 and changes consequential to the new Goods and Services Tax Act 2014).

We continued to apply a robust process in developing our rules framework to ensure our rule changes achieved the intended purposes. In this respect, we adopted a consultative, well-considered and balanced approach in arriving at final rule changes. Major rule changes, in particular, underwent a comprehensive consultation process to obtain feedback from the relevant industry participants, key stakeholders and the public before being finalised and issued. In 2015, we issued two public consultation papers on proposed changes to the Listing Requirements (“LR”) to seek feedback on sustainability reporting, as well as disclosure and corporate governance requirements and post-listing disclosure obligations for mineral, oil and gas listed issuers.