Lanka in first-hand experience of Börse Frankfurt marvel

A recent high level Lankan delegation to Germany was afforded the rare opportunity of a guided tour of the operations of Frankfurt Stock Exchange (FSE / Börse Frankfurt), Europe's most advanced bourse. The closed doors of FSE operating floor located at Eschborn town in Frankfurt were specially opened to the Lankan official delegation led by Rishad Bathiudeen (Minister of Industry and Commerce) on the morning hours of 26 February.

Minister Bathiudeen, who was in Germany to attend the DAW German-Asian Business Circle in Frankfurt, made the goodwill visit to the Europe's leading bourse, facilitated by the FSE and organised by the Trade Division of the Consulate General of Sri Lanka in Frankfurt.

Joining Minister Bathiudeen in the tour were Sarath Kongahage (Sri Lanka's Ambassador to Germany) and other senior officials.

"The Frankfurt Stock Exchange (FSE) is operated by its parent Deutsche Börse AG, is not a mere stock exchange but one of the world's largest international trading centres and also is the largest of Germany's seven exchanges with more than € 6 Mn transactions completed daily" said Kerstin Raclet, Asia and Middle East Business Development Officer of Deutsche Boerse Group, the parent operator of FSE. "FSE's fully electronic trading system called "Xetra", launched in 1997, is the world's most potent, fully integrated stock exchange trading system, and a leading electronic trading platform in the world using the latest advances in the state of the art market data display" said Ms Raclet who guided the Lankan team.

Ms Raclet added: "FSE's live digital displays running on the floor we are standing now in which movements of its DAX 30 indices are constantly shown in changing green/red colours are widely known across the German trading community."

A striking experience witnessed by the delegation inside the main trading floor was the uncharacteristic silence (for a stock exchange)-barring the machine and ticker clutter.

The delegation was also shown the previous trading floor used when the manual trading system was practiced by the then stockbrokers.

The previous floor, equipped with corded telephone handsets and other facilities for taking the orders shouted by brokers, is still kept intact for special visitors to the FSE.

According to the detailed spec made available by FSE, the FSE system's matches for buy - sell orders are managed centrally in the Xetra order book. Trading screen of securities of more than 4,700 registered traders are accessible to national and global investors at about 248 participants in 18 countries. Amongst them are all of the major banks and brokerage firms.

More than 9,000 equities inclusive of blue chips from Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia and US are available for business at any time.