Beltone Market Maker, a subsidiary of Beltone Financial Holding, has become a member of the NASDAQ Dubai, and will provide market making services on the region's international exchange. Beltone Market Maker will focus on offering bid and offer prices in NASDAQ Dubai-listed selected securities under its market making services. Through this, it aims to support liquidity, attractive pricing and active trading, Beltone said in a Tuesday statement. Alyaa Gomaa, Managing Director of Beltone Market Maker, told Daily News Egypt that Beltone applied for the membership to be able to facilitate trading on securities on the NASDAQ Dubai. The move underlines an expansion of capital markets cooperation between Egypt and the UAE, according to NASDAQ Dubai's Chief Executive, Hamed Ali, who added that Beltone will bring "significant" expertise to the exchange. "We intend to continually strengthen our relationship with the exchange and its market participants in a range of asset classes, as part of Beltone's strategy of dynamic growth within Egypt and across the region," said Beltone Financial Chairman Aladdin Saba. Cairo-based Beltone Financial Holding is a regional financial services group operating in the fields of asset management, investment banking, private equity, securities brokerage, custody, and research. In June 2014, the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority granted Beltone the Market Maker licence, the country's first licence for exchange traded funds. Also in 2014, Beltone Financial and its alliance with businessman Naguib Sawiris attempted to purchase 20% of Arab world's leading investment bank, EFG-Hermes. However, the acquisition was not completed, as Hermes shareholders offered 54.4m shares for sale to the Sawiris-Beltone alliance at EGP 16 per share. This number represented only 48% of the total number of shares the alliance had hoped to purchase.
The NASDAQ Dubai, which is located in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), is the international financial exchange serving the region between Western Europe and East Asia. The majority shareholder of NASDAQ Dubai is the Dubai Financial Market, who holds a two-thirds stake, with Borse Dubai owning the other third of the shares. The NASDAQ Dubai's regulator is the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA).
The first Egyptian company to be listed on the Dubai NASDAQ was Orascom Construction. This is in addition to the Linkage and Cooperation Agreement signed between NASDAQ Dubai and Misr for Central Clearing, Depository and Registry's (MCDR), which facilitates brokers' work. EFG-Hermes is the first Egyptian broker at NASDAQ Dubai. Earlier in 2015, MCDR and NASDAQ Dubai signed an agreement on mutual cooperation to establish technical relations to help companies seeking dual listing according to their shares in the Egyptian Stock Exchange (EGX) and NASDAQ Dubai. The agreement also aims to establish operational relations to support smooth trading in the stock market of both countries. Based on this agreement, MCDR and NASDAQ Dubai target boosting cooperation between capital markets in the UAE and Egypt on a wide scale.
