Nasdaq board committee to examine IPO

MUMBAI: The US Nasdaq stock market has set up a board committee to examine

plans for an initial public offering and expects a decision later this year,

Nasdaq vice chairman Alfred R Berkeley told Reuters Television on Friday.

"We have appointed a committee to examine the issue and I expect they would

be back with a report later this year, maybe as early as fall," said

Berkeley in an interview.

Speculation that Nasdaq will follow the lead set by two leading European

exchanges and list its shares has mounted in recent weeks. Nasdaq is the

second-largest US stock market after the New York Stock Exchange. Deutsche

Boerse, the German stock exchange operator, listed its shares last Monday

through an issue that raised almost 1 billion Euro, while Euronext, the merged

entity combining the Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris bourses, plans an initial

public offering (IPO) of shares in May.

While Berkeley's remarks suggest that Nasdaq is not ruling out a similar IPO,

he had previously warned that Nasdaq needs to make heavy investments, which may

not go down well with public shareholders. "These very heavy investments

are hardly compatible with demands from shareholders for short-term funds,"

he said in Paris last week.

On the issue of alliances in Europe, Berkeley said Nasdaq is still looking

for a partner to create a European leg that would help rival the New York Stock

Exchange's plans, to create a 24-hour global trading alliance. "We are

looking for a win-win situation in Europe. We want a partner who understands our

structure and who can help us develop the market," Berkeley said.

Nasdaq has been linked with London Stock Exchange, whose planned merger with

Deutsche Boerse fell through last year, and Easdaq, the cash-strapped,

pan-European stock exchange based in Brussels. Berkeley declined to comment on

individual cases.

New markets in Asia



Nasdaq expects to generate more listings in coming years from Asian countries
and its newly opened office in the Indian tech capital, Bangalore, that will

help achieve this, Berkeley said. The obvious choices are India, Taiwan, Hong

Kong and Singapore, but Nasdaq wants to broaden its horizon to embrace other

countries too. "We see good opportunities in Malaysia and Indonesia,"

he added.

Berkeley also said that efforts are on to draw big-time American companies,

into listing on Nasdaq Japan, the exchange's Japanese sibling set up last year.

When asked if that included companies like the world's biggest software maker

Microsoft Corp and the world's biggest computer networking company Cisco Systems

Inc, Berkeley said "that's the class of companies Nasdaq has been talking

to."

(C) Reuters Limited 2001.