My next guest is Sheikh Khalifa bin Ebrahim Al-Khalifa, CEO of the Bahrain Bourse. Thank you so much for joining us today.
It is my pleasure. It is always wonderful.
Can you tell us about Project Elevate?
It is nothing new — and that is a good thing. We looked at GCC regional exchanges, at what worked for them and what did not. We created the strategy learning from the mistakes and the success stories around us rather than trying to recreate the wheel. The main theme is to elevate both with emerging market indices and with our regional exchanges. When we started this exercise, the elements that required initiatives were limited — mainly liquidity and some purpose trade improvements. So we are already way ahead of where other exchanges were when they started. And Project Elevate does not involve Bahrain Bourse only — it involves the whole ecosystem, including the government.
How are you looking to improve liquidity specifically?
The strategy has three phases — ignite, accelerate, and harvest. This year is ignite and everything is working well. Once we are in 2027, we accelerate through an IPO pipeline. This year we onboarded four market makers with two more joining. Next year, those market makers with the IPO pipeline and currently listed companies will be able to provide services to the market as a whole — including a stock lending and borrowing platform where market makers can utilise readily available shares to be traded. Then the year after — harvest — is where all the other products and fintech come in. We have a very robust regulatory environment, I think the top priority environment in the region in terms of fintech. But at the end of the day, in capital markets, if you do not have liquidity, no matter what products you produce, you have to build the market for it first. So we build the market and then produce the products.
You co-founded the Tabadul model with ADX and it is now expanding into Africa. Can you tell us about that?
This was the belief of ADX from the beginning — that this is the way forward. We looked at it from a bird's eye view. There are other forms of investment around the world that do not require the complexity that we have, but we still have the competitive advantage in strong governance fundamentals and investment trust structure. You do not want to try to enter markets where there are big players already. You are the big player in the stock exchange world. That is how we created the model — let us simplify it, remove the complexity, and that gives a more robust positioning in areas of investment. And it is now expanding — with Egypt joining and Botswana already part of it.
How does the Bahrain Bourse partner with Bahrain's fintech ecosystem?
We are lucky to work with a regulator who is very advanced in this space, and also lucky to work as Team Bahrain. As a small country, we work as a team — it takes minutes between a government agency and a company here. The connection and synergy we have built is very hard to match unless you have seen it in reality. It started with the regulatory sandbox, and now we have all the progressive regulation in place. The exchange has to take advantage of that — but at the right time. The fintech ecosystem is way ahead and we will utilise that in the future.
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with us today.
Thank you.
