The New Zealand Exchange (NZX) has been granted membership to the Intermarket Surveillance Group (ISG), given its paramount role in the country’s capital markets industry, according to an NZX statement.
At present, the ISG constitutes more than fifty global exchange venues, regulators, and providers that collectively perform frontline market trading surveillance in the aim of fostering greater transparency for the industry. Overall, the ISG’s mandate is to facilitate the coordination and development of agendas and procedures that help assist members in unearthing and detecting possible fraudulent and manipulative activities across global markets.
Avid industry news reader? Take the Finance Magnates quiz
ISG membership is dependent upon a lengthy list of criteria and requirements with respect to applicants’ regulatory capabilities, specifically with regard to market surveillance and information sharing capabilities.
Moreover, the ISG also acts as a multilateral forum for members to share and distribute information to help assist and strengthen global investigations and enforcement actions – the group and its members regularly liaise with regulatory authorities.
Given the NZX’s instrumental role in New Zealand’s capital markets in relation to its first defense surveillance of market misconduct and abuse, the group’s inclusion to the ISG is important and logical for a number of reasons. In many instances, the NZX already conducts the same analysis and agenda as the ISG, albeit localized to the domestic NZ market. The NZX is also currently responsible for investigating and enforcing manipulative trading conduct under its Participant and Derivatives Market Rules.
According to the NZX Head of Market Supervision, Joost van Amelsfort, in a recent statement on the imembership induction: “We are delighted to become an ISG member which ultimately enhances NZX’s surveillance capabilities in relation to offshore trading on NZX’s markets.”
“NZX is committed to providing proactive market surveillance. This ensures we continue to operate fair, orderly and transparent capital markets that support dedicated investor protection and market integrity,” he added.
The NZX recently made headlines after releasing its yearly markets activity performance for 2015, which showed growth in several key business segments. In particular, New Zealand’s capital markets have continued to undergo generally strong growth across secondary capital raising and its overall trading activity in 2015. However, the NZX saw diminished activity in terms of initial public offerings (IPOs) in 2015, especially when weighed against 2014.
