International expansion of stock exchanges and their technology

Stock exchanges engage in international expansion

According to Financial Times, Korea Exchange, Asia’s third-largest bourse, is aggressively expanding abroad, exporting its trading platforms and information technology systems to emerging markets, in an attempt to boost its global profile and diversify its revenue sources.

The exchange has made overseas expansion a top priority for this year as it aims to join the top five ranks by 2020. KRX is already a highly liquid bourse with a well-developed trading system and has one of the world’s most actively traded derivatives market.

KRX aims to expand into 30 countries, mostly emerging markets in southeast and central Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. It helped Laos and Cambodia set up stock exchanges and would co-manage them while it won orders to modernise Uzbekistan's bourse and to install the monitoring system for the Philippine stock exchange.

The article goes on to explain that other exchanges are engaging in similar internationalization activities, to wit:

• The proposed merger between Australia’s stock exchange with Singapore Exchange.
• Deutsche Börse's advanced talks with NYSE Euronext.
• London Stock Exchange's agreed all-share merger with TMX Group, operator of Canada’s largest stock exchange.