Fathallah Berrada Chairman, Casablanca Stock Exchange

The Casablanca Stock Exchange is set to have another excellent year, after its main indices enjoyed strong rises last year, based on the strength of Morocco's economic growth, said Fathallah Berrada, Chairman of the bourse.

“The economic dynamism that has benefited Morocco is boosting the Casablanca Stock Exchange through the enthusiasm of individual, institutional and foreign investors,” said Berrada. “The majority of the companies that trade in Casablanca are businesses that are the leaders in their sectors, and that each year present the biggest earnings results in terms of growth of both sales and net profit.”

Morocco's non-farm gross domestic product expanded 6% in the fourth quarter from the same period a year earlier, though a decline in farm production brought overall GDP growth down to 2.1% for the period.

So far this year the bourse's two main indices have both risen more than 13%. The Masi index includes all the shares traded on the exchange, and the Madex index groups together the most active shares.

At that pace, the increases for the full year could come close to last year's excellent performance, when the Masi rose 33.9% and the Madex increased 35.1%. Market capitalization last year grew 40.5% to 586.3 billion dirhams ($80.8 billion), and has risen to more than 680 billion dirhams ($93.7 billion) through May of this year.

The growth in market cap last year was spurred partly by a series of ten successful initial public share sales, by companies including Societe Nationale d'Electrolyse e Petrochimie (SNEP), which sold 1.05 billion dirhams worth of shares, and Compagnie Generale Immobiliere (CGI). The sales brought the total number of companies traded on the exchange to 73 at the end of the year.

Six companies carried out capital increases in 2007, and another four companies sold bonds that trade at the exchange, an indication of how important the exchange is to companies that want to raise cash.

The Casablanca Stock Exchange in fact consists of five different financial markets. There are three equities markets, the main, development and high-growth markets, and each one has different listing rules regarding size of company, minimum amount of paid-in capital, minimum number of shares issued, etc. There is also the bond market, and a funds market, where private equity funds and securitized debt funds trade.

Mature and secure, the bourse has invested heavily in technology.

The bourse has invested heavily in new technology to permit even more growth in coming years. The current system is a modern, electronic, order-driven platform, and the exchange has ambitions to help spread that technology to other bourses in the region, while at the same time offering companies from other nearby countries the opportunity to trade in the bigger, more liquid market in Casablanca.

“We want a greater opening to international participation, especially from Africa,” Berrada says. “Being at the intersection of Western and African markets, the bourse is in a position to use European technologies and to transfer them to African exchanges.”

Omar Drissi Kaitouni, Member of the Managing Board and Director of Information Systems adds, “We often invite our foreign partners to visit Morocco so that they can see tangible evidence of the great changes and the continual evolution of our country, with the launch of large projects such as Tanger Med, the construction of motorways, but moreover, the development of a mature and secure stock exchange.”