21/02/2013 (The Star) - Bursa Malaysia Bhd chief executive Tajuddin Atan said the exchange will focus on turning domestic companies into regional champions after spending the past five years boosting corporate governance and investor protection.

Malaysia would promote companies in industries such as palm oil, Islamic finance and oil and gas, after putting in place governance rules that matched standards in Singapore and Thailand, Tajuddin said.

He declined to specify what steps the exchange would take.

“We have to start moving outside our borders,” he said in an interview at the bourse’s headquarters here on Tuesday.

“Now the challenge for us is to liberalise the market and start profiling what we have.”

Bursa, which operates South-East Asia’s third largest stock market, is seeking to lure investors to a nation that was the world’s fifth largest destination for initial public offerings (IPO) last year.

Malayan Banking Bhd (Maybank) is the country’s sole entry in the world’s 500 biggest companies by value with a market capitalisation of US$24bil (RM74.4bil), according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Two of Asia’s four biggest first-time share sales in 2012 came from Malaysia, as the nation surpassed financial hubs including London and Singapore with RM21.2bil raised, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Palm oil producer Felda Global Ventures Holdings Bhd lured US$3.3bil (RM10.23bil), making it the world’s third-biggest IPO last year, the data show.

“Bursa has the platform to tie up with all the South-East Asian exchanges so they can use that to promote the smaller names within the region first,” Lye Thim Loong, who helps manage the equivalent of US$500mil (RM1.55bil) at Libra Invest Bhd, said by phone here on Tuesday.

“They can organise and actually bring these companies to the community there. But those companies also have to be proactive and must spend money to do investor relations.”

The local stock market is valued at US$439bil (RM1.36 trillion), making it Asia’s 10th biggest exchange, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Bursa, with a market capitalisation of US$1.1bil (RM3.41bil) is the second-biggest publicly traded bourse in South-East Asia after Singapore, the data show.

The value of capital raised on the Malaysian exchange may be “slightly less than last year,” Tajuddin said. — Bloomberg