OREANDA-NEWS. December 20, 2012. The “Exchanges and the Market Popularization Initiatives for Retail” international seminar was held last afternoon at BM&FBOVESPA headquarters and was attended by representatives from Latin American exchanges, brokerage houses, regulatory bodies, self-regulatory organizations and financial education institutes. The event is part of the annual seminars agenda of the Ibero-American Federation of Exchanges (FIAB) and aims at discussing ways to attract more participants such as investors, issuers and intermediaries, among other publics.

In his seminar-opening speech, the BM&FBOVESPA Chief Executive Officer, Edemir Pinto, said popularization is part of a broad range of initiatives that the Exchange has developed as part of its commitment towards institutional solidification and towards self-regulation as a key to market development. “What started off as a program to promote the importance of the capital market as regards the country’s development, focusing on the role of the brokerage houses and financial intermediaries, soon turned into our commitment towards financial education and to investors’ broad access to information and trading,” he said.

“We have an obligation to explain what the Exchange is, its concepts and its attributions, so that the market can consolidate as a business financing mechanism,” said FIAB president, Joan Hortala i Arau, who is also Chairman of the Barcelona Stock Exchange. He said no country has obtained sustainable development without a capital market that is structured and, most importantly, widely-promoted.

During the seminar FIAB announced the “Sao Paulo Declaration”, which highlights how rich the debate is regarding the positive financial education experiences of the organization’s member countries, experiences which are to be shared systematically across the markets. “Over the coming months FIAB, as an organism that generates strategies for the development and integration of its member Exchanges and markets, will look into the options for collaborative work regarding this matter. For example, the creation of a financial education network and the organization of regional meetings and training, with the objective of assuring greater capacity and content in the sharing of experiences that facilitate promotion of the federation’s markets and a growing and broad participation by investors and companies in the development of the Ibero-American economies.”

The event included presentations of products and of trading models aimed at different types of participants, including retail investors, issuers and intermediaries. As well as sharing the member exchanges’ experiences with financial education projects and with products aimed at attracting issuers, the seminar’s participants debated brokerage house initiatives to access retail, and the discussion about how the Latin American market is positioning itself to take on the large global players and attract a larger number of domestic and foreign investors and issuers.