MAHMUT AYDOĞMUŞ, DIRECTOR OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, THE ISTANBUL STOCK EXCHANGE: "The region needs to have a niche to attract investors with"

The stock markets of Central and Eastern Europe must have a niche that makes them attractive to investors, says Mahmut Aydoğmuş, PhD, Director (Act.) International Relations at the Istanbul Stock Exchange.

Mahmut Aydoğmuş said: "As for the collaboration between the exchanges, I don't have a silver bullet solution and I don't think it's an easy task. But I think it's important for the talks to continue. Life is full of surprises. and recent developments, especially in technology, digitalization, bring many opportunities, I believe that the Central and Eastern European region has many advantages (...) The Istanbul Stock Exchange is open for the development of meaningful, robust and beneficial collaborative projects that are beneficial to all parties, both within and outside Central and Eastern Europe".

The Istanbul stock exchange official added: "I think the region needs to have a niche to attract investors. I don't know what that may be. It may be the development of a sustainability-related product, or a technology-related product, or certain companies, and so on. Ultimately, it is the core asset that attracts investors".

Regarding the development of the capital market in his country, Mahmut Aydoğmuş stressed that in Turkey there are the same priorities as in the markets of Central and Eastern Europe.

"Of course, the main priority is to develop the investor base, which, especially after the pandemic, had a surprising growth. For years, the number of active accounts has hovered around 1.2 million. But in the last year and a half, the number of active accounts has more than doubled, to 2.7 million. Covid-19 has done what we failed to do for the last 20 years. It's really surprising", said the Istanbul stock exchange official.

Also, Turkey's financial system is dominated by banks, and its market capitalization relative to GDP is 32.5%, said Mahmut Aydoğmuş, who concluded: "But we try to develop our capital market, and for that we try to diversify, to offer more and more products to investors, including indices, data services, etc. We are working on all these aspects in order to become more and more relevant in the capital markets space and to increase the market share in our financial system".