Direct trading among the Chilean, Colombian and Peruvian stock exchanges will be delayed from an originally expected late-January start date, as the testing period for the merger of the three bourses will be extended until March, the Santiago Stock Exchange said Monday.
The delay comes after the Lima Stock Exchange suspended its participation in the merger with its two South American counterparts as it waited for Peru’s government to standardize capital gains taxes at 5%.
The integrated market, known as MILA, began a test period on Nov. 22 and was originally slated for completion by the end of January.
The stock market in Lima suspended its participation in the merger on Dec. 20 and restarted the integration process Jan. 3 after Peru’s Congress decided the prior week to lower capital gains taxes to 5%.
“MILA’s executive committee will meet at the beginning of March to evaluate the results of this additional round of tests, define a new period for a dry run for all participants and set a new date for startup of the MILA,” the Santiago Stock Exchange said.
Once complete, MILA will be Latin America’s largest stock exchange in terms of companies listed and second-largest by market capitalization, at less than half the size of Brazil’s. It will have 563 listed companies, market capitalization of some $614 billion–compared to Brazil’s $1.5 trillion–and an estimated initial daily trading volume of about $300 million.