Badla Found Favour At South Asian Meet
The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) will take up its overseas expansion plan only after the BOLT expansion in the country is in place.
BSE president M G Damani, who recently undertook a tour of the US, said the US-based NRIs have evinced a keen interest in the system adding that large section of them were keen to make investments in India through trading in securities. "The NRIs had made large profits through investments (particularly in information technology stocks) during the US markets boom, and they have surplus funds which can be tapped," he said.
He said badla found favour at the South Asian regional conference for stock exchanges held between April 28-30, at Kuala Lumpur. BSE had presented two papers -- one on the BOLT trading network and the other on the badla -- at the conference.
While the local NRIs were keen on BOLT expansion, the stock exchange representatives of the Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad bourses showed interest in the badla trading system, Damani said. These exchanges practice a trading system which has close resemblance to the one existing in Mumbai, he said.
There were wide-ranging deliberations between with the representatives of bourses, local investors and NRIs, he said. ''We focussed on the point that badla trading would, in fact, work out to be a safer form of trading than futures,'' he said. The US-based SEC has 300 cases pending with it linked to futures trading, which was misused to carry out insider trading, he said.
BSE adopted an aggressive strategy to market BOLT software, which has been developed in-house, he said adding that it was for the first time the software was offered to stock exchanges world-wide.
On monitoring of the system at various overseas centres, Damani said there would be no problems.
"We have tied up with Hughes Network, that controls 40 per cent of the world market in networking, and signed an agreement for the purchase of VSATs (very small aperture terminals)," he said. Hughes Escorts (India) is now involved in surveying/approving the sites for VSAT connectivity in India as part of the BOLT expansion.
The company had finalised agreements for the purchase of VSATs for other overseas markets like the UAE, Hong Kong, Singapore and the UK, he said. Damani is set to tour the UK in the coming months to tap the NRI trading interest there.
"We can extend trading with these countries with the help of satellite connections. They are also willing to trade with us, subject to the necessary clearances from the government and the Reserve Bank," he said.
"Negotiations are on with Qupertino of California to purchase S-7000 and S-70000 new-generation computers for the speedy development of our trading system," the BSE president added.