The Dubai Financial Market, the only publicly listed Arabian Gulf stock exchange, posted a 19.2 per cent drop in second quarter net profit on lower trading commission fees.
Net profit attributable to equity owners in the three months to the end of June fell to Dh43.2 million compared with Dh53.5m in a year-earlier period, the exchange said in a statement.
Total income declined 10 per cent to Dh92.1m from Dh102.3m a year earlier. Trading commission fees, the main source of income, dropped 22.8 per cent to Dh49.3m from Dh63.9m.
The stock exchange, which is up 1.81 per cent year-to-date, had a trading value of Dh70 billion in the first half of this year, a 1 per cent increase from a year-earlier period.
The DFM said that it is working on a number of initiatives to boost liquidity in the market, which has languished because of regional instability, anaemic investor confidence and lack of new entrants to the bourse.
In March, the exchange introduced a platform for exchange-traded funds.
The DFM said that it hopes to introduce regulated short-selling this year and real estate investment trusts (Reits) next year, as part of a 2021 strategy aimed at diversifying asset classes to elevate the bourse to developed market status. Short selling is the practice of selling borrowed shares in the hope of buying them back later at a lower price.
The bourse expects two initial public offerings to take place between now and the end of next year as confidence begins to pick up, Hassan Al Serkal, executive vice-president of DFM, said earlier this month.
