韩国交易所Aims to Expand via Stakes in Smaller Players

Business as usual isn’t an option for Kyungsoo Choi, chairman and CEO of the Korea Exchange. Choi, who was appointed by South Korean President Park Geun-hye in 2013, says he’s accelerating a plan to grow KRX into other Asian and frontier markets, with an eye to investing in smaller stock exchanges that may benefit from its technology and experience.

“We are seeking to expand our scope of business to nations in Central Asia and also to Africa,” he tells亚博赞助欧冠. “We are interested in investing, in having equity stakes in those markets,” adds Choi, who was previously president and CEO of Hyundai Securities Co., one of Korea’s top brokerages. “We would like to have 10 percent or 25 percent, and even up to 49 percent, equity stakes in every market we invest in.”

KRX公司is one of several Asian exchanges jostling to become financial hubs throughout the region and beyond. As Choi points out, it’s ramping up its expansion as exchanges worldwide fight to secure liquidity through mergers and alliances.

Choi believes the韩国证券业must follow the lead of domestic companies such as Samsung, which has become a global market leader by exporting its technology. Busan-based KRX is building on an existing international platform that includes 49 percent and 45 percent equity stakes in the operating companies of the Lao Securities Exchange and the Cambodia Securities Exchange, respectively. In the past five years, KRX, which is designated as a public enterprise even though the Korean government holds no direct stake, has helped both exchanges develop and upgrade their trading systems.

“Korea Exchange is one of the most modern global exchanges in the world and has some of the highest derivatives volumes globally,” says Anshuman Jaswal, a New York–based senior analyst with financial services research firm Celent. But it has a high concentration of equity index options, and a decline in trading volume for this product has made the market environment tougher, Jaswal explains: “KRX needs to diversify its product portfolio to continue to remain competitive globally.”

KRX公司was created in 2005 through the merger of the Korea Stock Exchange and several other exchanges. Chief among KRX’s established rivals is New York–based Nasdaq OMX Group, a provider of trading and other technology to some 70 marketplaces in 50 countries. Before NYSE Euronext merged with Atlanta-headquartered Intercontinental Exchange in 2013, its NYSE Technologies division competed favorably with Nasdaq. But ICE hasn’t shown much interest in being a vendor, market observers note, so there may be an opportunity for the likes of KRX.

15大证券exchange, KRX had a market capitalization of $1.25 trillion at the end of last year, according to the World Federation of Exchanges, an increase of almost 14 percent from 2011. But it hasn’t kept pace with its Asian competitors, particularly mainland China’s two exchanges, Shanghai and Shenzhen, which have seen volumes triple in the past decade, catapulting them to No. 5 and No. 8, respectively. Including theHong Kong Stock Exchange(No. 6), China’s equity capital markets had a collective market cap of $10 trillion at the end of 2014, still far behind the combined $26 trillion for the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq Stock Market (Nos. 1 and 2) but well ahead of third-ranked London Stock Exchange Group ($6.2 trillion).

Celent的Jaswal表示，尽管KRX远未成为全球领先者，但它是一个具有吸引力的深层次市场，产品种类繁多，包括1800多家上市公司的证券和数十种衍生品、交易所交易基金、股票挂钩权证和房地产投资信托基金。

崔先生拥有首尔松石大学经济学博士学位，早年在韩国财政部工作。他说，KRX在前沿市场提供潜在合作伙伴的资金不止这些。一个吸引人的是EXTURE+，它的内部交易平台，已经被阿塞拜疆、柬埔寨、老挝、乌兹别克斯坦和越南交易所采用。今年2月，泰国证券交易委员会（Securities and Exchange Commission）与韩国证交所（Korean Exchange）签署了一项协议，将实施KRX开发的市场监控系统，以防范交易错误和计算机崩溃等风险。“我们已经在与世界上最好的贸易系统竞争，”崔说，他指出，KRX计划今年将其信息技术业务扩展到东欧和中东。

The KRX head has no illusions about what’s at stake: “We must expand in order to survive,” he says.