The Malta Stock Exchange saw an increase in pre-tax profit of 15% last year to €1.3 million while the number of listings increased, Parliamentary Secretary Tonio Fenech said today.

The exchange last year saw nine new bond issues, two new equity issues and 30 Government Stock and Treasury Bill issues. The total new primary listings raised €808 million in 2007, excluding Treasury Bills.

The new issues included the first ever foreign company equity issue in Malta. Another foreign owned company was also listed in 2008 and more interest is being shown by other organisations.

Mr Fenech said the government had always recognised the Stock Exchange to be a strategic component of Malta's financial services industry.

With this in mind, during 2007 the government embarked on a number of initiatives to achieve growth in the financial services industry as well as all other industries. Among them was agreement with the EU on the tax code and the creation of FinanceMalta to act as both a marketing arm to the finance industry as well as the consultative channel with the industry .

The Financial Markets Act was amended to enable the Malta Stock Exchange to restructure itself to take advantage of valuable opportunities that complement the financial industry in Malta. This has led to the creation of CSD (Malta) plc, a sister company to the stock exchange that will handle the certificate depositary business.

Euro adoption also enabled the Exchange to become a direct member of TARGET-2, the pan-European clearing and settlement system operated by the European Central Bank.

"This now places us within the European and International payment systems infrastructure making Malta so much more attractive as a place of doing international business."

"The Exchange is also becoming a member of the OTCQX, an international share trading platform operated over the Internet from the USA. The intention is to have Malta Stock Exchange listed organisations participate on the international market, seeking international investors through this platform. This is possible since the Malta Stock Exchange is considered to be a quality approved exchange by the OTCQX. This quality assurance is further enhanced with the Exchange's compliance with MiFID (Market in Financial Instruments Directive) and the Transparency Directive."

Although equity trading has reduced compared to 2006 levels, this was more than made up in trading in the newly listed Treasury Bills, Government Stocks and Corporate Bonds. This has brought total trading to EUR 457 million,which was an increase of 22% compared to 2006. By the end of December 2007 market capitalisation had reached EUR 7.7 billion, up from EUR 6.8 billion in 2006.