Indonesian stock exchange to speed up IPO process

[JAKARTA] The Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) plans to speed up market flotations this year by letting companies avoid a laborious paper-based process by registering their initial public share offers online instead, its president said on Friday.

"We are discussing how to ease this. We are talking to (the financial services authority) OJK to digitalise the registration process," Tito Sulistio told Reuters.

In an interview in his car on the way to a meeting with the OJK, Sulistio said by moving part of the IPO process online companies can cut at least two weeks off the 13 weeks it usually takes to get from registration to launching the offer.

He said he hoped the change would be approved by the end of the month as it did not require big regulatory changes.

The IDX also aims to open a full branch in Surabaya in East Java to reach companies based in eastern Indonesia so they can process their IPO through the Surabaya office.

The IDX is targeting 30-35 IPOs this year, Sulistio said, up from the 15 new listings made last year, which were worth 11.3 trillion rupiah (US$860 million) according to OJK data.

He is optimistic as a total of 20 companies are already in varying stages of the IPO process, amid expectations of a recovery in economic growth this year. Indonesia's main stock index is among the best performers in emerging markets so far this year, gaining 5.6 per cent.

Meanwhile, Sulistio said he was actively promoting the stock market to unlisted companies, meeting executives nearly every day.

"I believe most ... want their companies to go public. They know it will be more efficient for their financing, improve company image, not to mention the potential to grow larger," he said.

REUTERS