The Board of the Capital Market Authority (CMA) issued a resolution to recompose the Advisory Committee for its sixth term to comprise of 12 part-time members from market participants, experts, specialists and experienced college professors. The Committee's composition took into consideration a wider representation of market participants. 

A delegation of the Capital Market Authority participated in the Kuwait Economic Forum (Kuwait Vision 2035) held in Brussels, Belgium, organized by the Kuwait Direct Investment Promotion Authority (KDIPA) in cooperation with the Arab- Belgian- Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce.
This participation came as an invitation from KDIPA in the belief of the importance of cooperation between all parties in the capital markets system in the State of Kuwait in order to accelerate progress. 

"Capital Markets and Institutional Sustainability" was the title of the 3rd Annual Conference of the Capital Markets Authority. The conference was held in the presence of high-profile economic figures, as well as many concerned and interested persons in securities activities and representatives of listed companies and licensed persons.

The Capital Markets Authority held an honoring ceremony for the trainees of “The CMA Sixth Program of Training the Newly Graduated Kuwaitis” on May 5, 2019 in the presence of the Chairman of CMA Board of Commissioners, the Vice Chairman of CMA Board of Commissioners, and the Heads of CMA sectors.
It is worth nothing that this program strengthens the role of CMA in developing the community by qualifying young national cadres to work in the capital markets. This training program lasted for five months, and was pided into three phases as follows:
• The first phase: the local training (from 2-12-2018 to 24-1-2019):
This phase included some lectures and training courses about several fields such as accounting, financial supervision, and legal aspects, in addition to training on the necessary behavioral and managerial skills that were presented by authorized local and international institutions. The trainees received certificates for each training program. Some specialists from CMA have presented specialized courses such as: Anti-Money Laundering and Combating Financing of Terrorism, Judicial Power, Arbitration, and CMA Law No. 7 of 2010 and its amendments.
• The second phase: the field training (from 27-1-2019 to 21-2-2019):
This phase was pided into two sections. The first section was the field visits, in which the trainees would visit several institutions in Kuwait to view their major activities. These institutions were: Central Bank of Kuwait, Boursa Kuwait, Kuwait Clearing Company, Kuwait Investment Authority, The National Fund for Small and Medium Development, and the International Monetary Fund. The second section was training the trainees in CMA headquarter in order to acquaint them with its work and competences.
• The third phase: external training ( from 4-3-2019 to 26-4-2019):
In this phase, the trainees will go to Harvard Law School in Boston, in the United States of America for intensive training. They get acquainted with several capital markets’ systems and the practices that are applied internationally to compare them with what is applied locally. In addition to getting the knowledge and experience from the fields that they have visited, such as New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, and Bloomberg.

 

In a landmark development that comes as a global recognition for Boursa Kuwait, the Capital Market Authority (CMA) and the Kuwait Clearing Company’s (KCC) sweeping market development efforts, MSCI Inc., a leading provider of critical decision support tools and services for the global investment community, today announced the reclassification of Kuwait to ‘Emerging Market’ from its previous ‘Frontier Market’ status in its 2019 Annual Market Classification Review. The reclassification is subject to omnibus account structures and same National Investor Number (NIN) cross trades being made available for international institutional investors before the end of November 2019.

The reclassification, which is expected to lead to significant foreign capital flows to country’s equities, will take effect in one step coinciding with MSCI’s May 2020 Semi‐Annual Index Review. This would lead to an inclusion of nine stocks in the MSCI Emerging Market Index having a pro forma index weight of approximately 0.5%.
The MSCI status upgrade follows Kuwait’s inclusion in S&P Dow Jones Indices’ (S&P DJI), Global Equity Indices, with Emerging Markets classification in December 2018 and in the FTSE Russell Emerging Markets Index in September 2017.
The global index compiler’s decision to include Kuwait in its Emerging Markets benchmarks comes in response to the country results in the 2019 Annual Market Classification Review. Announcing the reclassification, MSCI noted that Kuwait’s Market Development Project has set the path for the seamless implementation of numerous regulatory and operational enhancements in the Kuwaiti equity market. These enhancements have significantly increased the accessibility level of the Kuwaiti equity market for international institutional investors and resulted in broad positive feedback from these investors on the MSCI reclassification proposal.
As part of its market development plans, Boursa Kuwait has launched several far-reaching market reforms, including a new rulebook, which helped the company to specify new three-tiered market segmentation, consisting of the premier market, the main market, and the auction market. In addition, the company has introduced the Over-the-Counter (OTC) trading platform to enable investors to trade unlisted securities with greater transparency. Furthermore, it has recently launched part 1 of its Phase Three market development plans, which included the launch of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), Tender Offers, Trade at Last and Stock Swaps, with plans to introduce further services and tools over the coming months.
Over the past few years, KCC in collaboration with Boursa Kuwait and the CMA, took on a leading role in applying numerous changes in relation to post trading systems, such as adjusting the settlement period to T+3, adopting the DvP principle and introducing Custodian Rejection. KCC also took the initiative to apply a new mechanism that allows for the execution of decisions taken at general assemblies, according to international standards of the same. Moreover; KCC has also facilitated the account opening process for foreign custodians, and has also reduced the accompanied documentary collection requirement, to support the Kuwait Capital Market position as an attractive investment platform.

 

FRA held its annual press conference on Tuesday to highlight its achievements in 2018 and the changes witnessed by the non-banking financial services sector during the Authority's march to implement its comprehensive strategy for non-banking financial services 2018-2022. FRA’s strategy aims at creating an inclusive non-banking financial system and a catalyst for economic growth. Consequently, this will improve the competitiveness of the national economy and its attractiveness to foreign investments through enhancing levels of transparency and integrity and combating corruption. Besides, FRA’s strategy seeks to protect the rights of all parties dealing in non-banking financial markets and tries to strike a balance through practicing its regulatory role.

FRA revealed that the ministerial decree no. 599 of 2019 was issued to renew the appointment of Counselor Reda Abdel Moati as FRA’s Deputy Chairman as of the end of March and for one year.