Singapore Exchange (SGX) and the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) have rolled out a scheme that will enable orders for Indian Nifty equity derivatives from global institutional investors in Singapore to be cleared through the Indian bourse’s international financial services centre in the state of Gujarat.
The NSE IFSC-SGX Connect was launched over the weekend, with three global financial companies and four from Singapore on board.
The global firms are Germany’s Deutsche Bank AG, Morgan Stanley from the US and Switzerland’s UBS AG. The Singapore firms are OCBC Securities Pte Ltd, Orient Futures International, Philip Nova, and StoneX Financial.
SGX and NSE made the announcement in a joint statement on July 29, when the scheme was launched.
SGX, as the central counterparty, will route orders for Nifty equity derivatives to the NSE IFSC for trading, execution, clearing and settlement.
SGX Chief Executive Officer Loh Boon Chye described the launch as a “significant milestone” while his NSE counterpart Ashishkumar Chauhan called it a “historic day” for the NSE IFSC.
According to Loh, the scheme will bring the two bourses “one step closer to combining the growing domestic and international liquidity pools for Nifty products”.
“We are confident that the Connect will be the key platform that connects the world to India, offering global investors unprecedented access to India’s capital markets,” he says in the statement.
NSE IFSC is located in the Gujarat International Finance Tec City, or GIFT City, India’s first operational smart city, where companies get various tax waivers to set up operations.
“This Connect will consolidate the liquidity pool for Nifty products in the NSE IFSC exchange and will facilitate access for global market participants in GIFT City. Consequently, it will give a boost to the IFSC capital markets ecosystem and is an important step towards making GIFT City a preferred global destination for capital market activities,” Chauhan says.
