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TSE held Dubai share sale talks, chairman says

"We have had talks with the Dubai bourse. I met the chairman. We want to sign a memorandum of understanding first and we both want to go further."

Wu Rong-i, chairman of the Taiwan Stock Exchange

Taiwan's main stock market held talks on selling shares to Borse Dubai Ltd, which has been expanding with its purchases of NASDAQ OMX Group Inc and the London Stock Exchange Group PLC.

Taiwan Stock Exchange Corp (TSE, 證交所) plans an initial public offering (IPO) early next year, chairman Wu Rong-i (吳榮義) said in an interview yesterday in Vietnam's financial center, Ho Chi Minh City. The exchange plans to sell as much as a 25 percent holding to overseas bourses and has held initial talks with the New York Stock Exchange, Deutsche Boerse AG, the CME Group Inc, and NASDAQ OMX, it said in December.

"We have had talks with the Dubai bourse," Wu said. "I met the chairman. We want to sign a memorandum of understanding first and we both want to go further."

The discussions were held at a meeting of the World Federation of Exchanges in Cairo last month, Wu said.

Borse Dubai owns the sheikdom's two stock exchanges, is a shareholder in the London Stock Exchange and will get an almost 20 percent stake in NASDAQ OMX, the world's second-largest stock exchange by volume of shares traded, through a joint takeover of the Nordic stock market operator OMX.

"We don't deny we were in general dialogue" with the Taiwanese exchange, Borse Dubai chairman Essa Kazim said yesterday in a telephone interview from Dubai. Kazim declined to comment further.

Kazim said in August that Borse Dubai had a "general interest in expanding" and was "looking at other stock exchanges."

The Dubai exchange may bid for a stake in the Karachi Stock Exchange should the Pakistani bourse be put up for sale, he said at the time.

Borse Dubai owns 80 percent of the Dubai Financial Market. It also owns the Dubai International Financial Exchange Ltd, the Gulf's first bourse open to issuers and investors of any nationality.

The TSE is waiting for an amendment to current laws to allow it to merge with the GRETAI Securities Market for bonds and unlisted stocks, the Taiwan Futures Exchange and Taiwan Depository & Clearing Corp, Wu said. After that, shares may be sold to as many as three foreign companies, he said.

"We hope that this amendment can be quickly passed, perhaps first quarter or second quarter at the latest," he said.

After consolidating the markets, the exchange will "launch an IPO, maybe at the beginning of next year."

The TSE may be interested in buying shares in the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange when Vietnam's main bourse holds an initial public offering, Wu said.

The Taiwanese bourse and its Vietnamese counterpart signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) in Ho Chi Minh City on Tuesday on cooperation in areas such as the exchange of information and in unspecified joint research projects.
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