Newly-elected Philippine Stock Exchange president Ramon Monzon said the local bourse wants to reduce brokers’ ownership in the exchange to 20 percent to comply with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s requirements.
Brokers currently own a combined 27.9-percent interest in PSE.
Monzon said in a interview following the annual stockholders’ meeting the board was now studying options on how to further reduce brokers’ ownership in the exchange including private placement and issuance of voting preferred shares.
Monzon said the SEC gave PSE a year to comply with the 20-percent ownership limit for brokers.
He said as an initial move, PSE asked the SEC to remove from the brokers ownership computation the shares held by inactive brokers. If removed, brokers ownership will drop 3.4 percent to 24.9 percent, he said.
PSE also asked the SEC to remove the prohibition barring brokers from buying PSE shares. “We asked the SEC if they could relax the rules prohibiting brokers from buying PSE stocks so that normal trades can happen. This may also convince other brokers to sell because maybe they are not excited to sell their PSE shares because current market price is low,” he said.
