Bank of Valletta sets up stockbroking company

by Anthony Manduca

Bank of Valletta has set up a new company to provide stockbroking

services to the Bank's branch network and customers and to other companies in the BOV Group. Joseph F.X. Zahra, BOV chairman, recently announced the setting up of the company, BOV Stockbrokers Limited (BOVSL), and that an application for Franco Xuereb, an employee of BOV plc, to be issued with a stockbroker's licence had been lodged with the Malta Stock Exchange.

The liberalisation of stockbroking has been the subject of some controversy between the Malta Stock Exchange and stockbrokers who feared that the opening up of this sector was taking place too rapidly. In fact the amendments to the Malta Stock Exchange Act are still being discussed in Parliament. Such amendments would allow organisations such as banks to own stockbroking companies.

Mr Zahra said that the need had been long felt in the BOV Group for this service, and that this initiative

followed logically on the BOV's long-stated intention of providing a seamless financial service for Maltese investors.

"The new company," said Mr Zahra, "will be able to execute orders for the purchase and sale of equities and bonds on the Malta Stock Exchange and on all the major exchanges in the world. Additionally, the BOV, as a fully licensed custodian, will offer custody services with quarterly valuation reports, and at a later date we shall be making available via Internet daily portfolio valuations for the larger investors."

The BOV chairman also said that BOV would be introducing other initiatives, including Securities Purchase Agreements. Other initiatives were in the pipe-line and would be announced in due course.

Mr Zahra said that he was convinced that this latest BOV initiative would lead to a deeper and more active capital market in Malta, and he hoped that other financial institutions would follow the BOV lead, a development which he thought vital if a transparent, liquid and efficient capital market, which he thought was in everyone's interest, was to evolve in Malta.

The members of the board of directors of BOVSL are Joseph F.X. Zahra (chairman), Tom Anastasi Pace, Tonio Depasquale and Franco Xuereb. Victor J. Cardona is secretary to the Board.

BOVSL is expected to start operations in early 2001 and the new company will be operating from very centrally located premises in St Anne Street, Floriana. However, the Bank's customers will be able to avail themselves of BOVSL's services at any of the Bank's branches and customers and orders will be channelled through BOVSL on a real-time basis using BOVNet, the BOV Group's electronic communications back-bone.