Time to have a new board for tech startups

SOME Catalist-listed companies are having to turn to small crowd-lending websites to get enough funds to survive. Others are actually so large that they qualify for the mainboard, yet presumably do not want to list there because of the heavier compliance burden.

With the Catalist board becoming increasingly a catch-all, and with the equity crowdfunding scene here so fragmented, it is an opportune time for the Singapore Exchange (SGX) to revisit old plans of entering the early-stage startup space. This could be by way of a dedicated third board with lighter rules than the Catalist but necessarily higher requirements for investor sophistication.

And if that does not pan out for reasons such as reputational risk, another possibility would be for Singapore to bring in a well-known international bourse operator willing to open a second exchange here focused on tech startups at various stages of development.