Warsaw Stock Exchange: The upgrade

     As many as fourteen initiatives contain the revised strategy of the Warsaw Stock Exchange until 2022. A greater number of trading platforms and instruments is expected to attract both companies and investors. New platforms will enable, among others the obtaining of financing from venture capital funds or crowdfunding. At the beginning of 2019, another projects will be presented.

      New platforms will entail the entrance to the non-public market, i.e. the platform will be able to raise funding from the VC funds, in the crowdfunding formula, and the limited secondary trading of issued instruments will be possible.

     This platform is to be based on blockchain technology, a distributed database used so far mainly in transactions on cryptocurrencies. It is a very safe technology, but not very efficient and therefore useful in systems with lower frequency of trading.

    Private Market is mainly for start-ups, but it is complemented by something more important, namely GPW Ventures. This is a fund of funds that will invest in VC funds and in this way start-ups will indirectly gain a new investor by the venture fund.

    The WSE also wants to expand the system of securities lending, which is to stimulate short sales and increase demand. It plans to introduce business reporting standards that allow for automatic data processing and reduction of costs related to reporting by companies (WSE Data). In turn, the TCA (Transaction Cost Analysis) project will enable the creation of a set of innovative tools for the identification and analysis of transaction costs.

     Another area for the development of which strategy 2022 is to give an impulse is the derivatives market. There will be two new reference indicators for the bond and money market: Warsaw Repo Rate and Bondspot Benchmark. The WSE also wants to stimulate the repo market, i.e. returning securities in exchange for cash, which will not only strengthen the liquidity of the financial sector, but also set interest rates on the basis of market transactions.

    Another new platform, something we have never done before, is a waste trading platform. Many companies treat their waste as a cost, and for those who handle waste, it is a very valuable raw material and the idea is to combine one with the other in a standardized, homogeneous way to bring this industry to a new level of technological service.

     The diversity of sources of revenues is to bring the WSE closer to more developed exchanges, where trading in shares brings a significantly smaller share of revenues than in Warsaw. Especially since from September the Warsaw Stock Exchange will become a developed market according to the FTSE Russell classification as the first from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. From now on, it will be compared to the largest markets in the world, not to the markets of the region.