RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Santiago Stock Exchange (BCS) shareholders approved integrating Chile’s leading stock exchanges, Colombia, and Peru on Wednesday.
The project involves the integration of the ownership of the three stock exchanges and their subsidiaries and the trading, clearing, and settlement platforms of each of them through the formation of a new regional holding company, which will be headquartered in Chile.
The shares of the Santiago Stock Exchange and the Colombian Stock Exchange will have a 40% participation in the exchange, respectively, while the shares of the Lima Stock Exchange will represent the remaining 20% of the capital.
Next week, the Colombian Stock Exchange (BVC) and the BVL Group, which includes a group of five companies, will hold their respective meetings, in which they will vote to continue with the process.
The president of the Santiago Stock Exchange, Juan Andrés Camus, highlighted the result of the vote and pointed out that “the integration of the three capital markets is a milestone in the history of the Latin American stock market, a necessary step to achieve greater competitiveness vis-à-vis global players and to position ourselves as an attractive pole at world level for investors”.
According to studies conducted by strategy and legal consulting firms before the decision, the project will create value for the market, its participants, the economies of the three countries, their shareholders, and stakeholders.
At the same time, it will lay the groundwork for a potential increase in the number of issuers and, therefore, of issues; a more significant development of the retail market; an expansion in the regional participation of pension fund managers; a growth in the volume of derivatives traded, especially in Peru and Chile; and the development of a regional market for depositary receipts, among other advantages, said the BCS.
The integration process began in 2018, at which time, through the formation of a tripartite and multidisciplinary team, a pre-feasibility analysis was carried out which, considering the experiences and lessons learned since the beginning of the Latin American Integrated Market (MILA), evaluated the options for greater integration of the markets of the three countries.
Along with the approval of the shareholders of the Chilean, Colombian, and Peruvian stock exchanges, authorizations from the regulatory agents of each country are required, and the formalization of the operation may be extended until mid-2022.