The Hindu : Business : Calcutta Stock Exchange gets new lease of life

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Saturday, Nov 10, 2007
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Calcutta Stock Exchange gets new lease of life

Special Correspondent

Trading starts using the BSE platform

KOLKATA: The Calcutta Stock Exchange (CSE), the country’s second oldest exchange after Bombay, got a new lease of life on Friday as it started trading using the BSE platform. The BSE along with the Birlas, the Poddars and the Bangurs now have equity stake in the CSE which had remained in a moribund state for nearly six years now, owing mainly to low volume of trading with several other factors triggering a downslide. The CSE Secretary, P. K. De, told The Hindu that the one-hour symbolic Muhurat trading was set to pave the way for increased volumes for the CSE whose daily trading was an insignificant Rs. 1.50 crore. He said that there were 942 brokers registered with the exchange now and many of them enthusiastically traded on Friday, “using their own contract notes” but on the BSE platform. This, he said, was a unique system. BSE was on Friday linked with the CSE, he said.

Market sources said that along with low trading voumes, delisting by companies and archaic system, a scam that broke out in 2001, had spelt the final death knell of the exchange. Most big companies delisted from this exchange and moved onto the BSE and the NSE. However, many old timers were not too keen to share the exuberance saying that trading volumes would not swell as the exchange had long lost the prime position that it had held among the country’s bourses with volumes averaging Rs. 500 crore daily, even in the 1990s.

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