KUWAIT: The Kuwait Economic Society (KES) held a symposium on the new Capital Market Law number 22/2015 on Tuesday at its premises. This law came into effect on November 10, 2015, and it is amending the previous Capital Market Law  number 7/2010.

Legal consultant Hossam Abdullah, Managing Partner, Adlouni and Partners said that this new law is the platform to apply the changes and improve the situation of stock exchange in Kuwait. "The main purpose of this law is to rectify the deficiencies in the previous law, which were noticed during the past four years. Sixty four articles of that law were amended by the new law. In addition, the implementing regulation of 902 pages was issued," he noted during the symposium.

He also explained the kinds of dealing with securities and shares. He spoke about the mortgage, foreclosure, notifying the debtors and the guarantors, classifying of client's portfolios, and financial resources.

Investment

"The Stock Exchange Authority aims to develop the Kuwait Stock Exchange market through verifying and improving its investment tools applying to international standards," Hossam stressed. "This law also issued special system for the market maker activities." "The legal people have done their role, and now it is the chance of investors to exploit the new facilities given to them," he concluded.

Ali Khalil, Chief Operating Officer, Kuwait Financial Center 'Markaz' noted that the positive effect of this new low will be visible on the long term. "The investment products will not be of much effect on the short term. Actually, the demand on buying shares is weak in the present time and I think that the current problem of the stock market is not legal, but economic, which is still persisting even with issuing this new law," he explained.

"There should be an institutional investor and individuals. It is true that there are some funds that are investing in professional way, thus the investors that were present in the market before 2010 are not there anymore," added Khalil.

Ecosystem

Faisal Sarkhoh, Chief Executive Officer, KAMCO Investment Company stated that we need to improve the ecosystem to get the trust of investors back. "We live in a developing area and companies should continue to produce innovative tools. Unfortunately, the market's liquidity dropped under KD 10 million while it used to reach KD 200 million in the past. The bad situation of the stock market started last year and is still persisting, and this was caused from different factors including the drop of oil price, geopolitical factors, and others," he pointed out.

By Nawara Fattahova