Colombian stock market traders now have the chance to trade in major international companies at their own bourse thanks to a new system operated by Deutsche Bank.
The Marcado Global Colombia initiative will allow shares in global names to be traded with local brokers and priced in Colombian pesos. Companies such as Google, Apple, Walmart, Citigroup, Johnson & Johnson, Goldman Sachs and Exxon are part of the group available for trading.
A major advantage of the new initiative, launched with much fanfare on Wednesday, is that Colombia-based investors will have a wider choice of sectors to speculate on and hedge against a Bogota list that is dominated by energy and mining companies. Alvora Tirado, president of Interbolsa Comisionista, a trading firm “sponsoring” ten of the 21 foreign companies taking part, explained that the spread of sectors was a strategy “so that clients can have well-distributed investments.”
President of the New York Stock Exchange, Juan Pablo Cordoba, told press that he expected more international firms to be added to the scheme in the coming weeks. He also added that the scheme was modelled on a similar one in Mexico where trading in foreign stock now accounts for 30% of all volume.
The new initiative comes at the end of a highly successful year for the Bogota stock exchange, in which it has ambitiously looked beyond national borders. The IGBC index has increased by almost 33% since the start of January while a programme to integrate the Bogota exchange with those in Lima and Santiago, Chile got underway last month.