The United Nations (UN) sustainability committee, formed as per the UN’ initiative for the stock exchanges’ sustainability (UN-SSE), chooses the Egyptian Exchange (EGX) as a reference model for communication between the stock exchanges and the other market participants. The Committee expressed its appreciation for EGX’ efforts in the sustainability field, and praised EGX’ model for the effective communication with the market’ parties, and called the initiative’ members of the other stock exchanges to follow both of EGX and the Brazilian Stock Exchange "Bovespa" as pioneered models in this field.
It is scheduled that EGX’ representatives will submit a speech through the internet (Webinar) that brings together the representatives of the initiative’ member exchanges, including London Stock Exchange, German Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, New York Stock Exchange, Brazilian Stock Exchange "Bovespa" and Johannesburg Stock Exchange of South Africa.
Dr. Mohammad Omran, EGX Chairman, stated that EGX’ participation as a leader in the Middle East and North Africa region in the stock markets’ sustainability initiative started with the initiative’ launch since 2012 as one of the 5 founders’ stock exchanges for that initiative (which are EGX, Nasdaq, Bovespa, Johannesburg Stock Exchange and Istanbul Stock Exchange of Turkey), where the UN General Secretariat for Trade and Development (UNCTAD) called the rest of the world's stock exchanges to follow the 5 models’ stock exchanges in their commitment for the sustainability criteria.
EGX Chairman pointed that this leading experience comes as per EGX’ realization of the importance of the stock markets’ sustainability elements, and their role in the overall development.
The initiative’ events included an effective participation of EGX chairman in the Global Dialogue conference for the stock markets’ sustainability, that was held in the years 2012 and 2014.
Dr. Omran, said that the current year 2015 will witness a special interest of EGX’ management in the areas of social responsibility, environmental protection and governance as the leading elements of the sustainable development. EGX will organize many events related to those activities during the current year.
The UN’ initiative for the stock markets’ sustainability is one of the most important sustainable development’ initiatives, it includes a number of institutions and global initiatives such as UNCTAD, UN-Global Compact, and Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), in addition to 17 securities markets as members of the initiative including London Stock Exchange , German Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, New York Stock Exchange, Brazil Stock Exchange and South Africa Stock Exchange. The initiative witnessed an active participation of EGX through the members’ regular meetings, in order to discuss the most important developments with regard to the work mechanisms impact on increasing awareness about the sustainable development’ importance for the stock market, and modernizing the markets’ work frameworks to increase transparency and disclosure levels.
It should be noted that EGX is one of the most important leader markets in the sustainable development field, where it launched the sustainability index S & P / EGX ESG in collaboration with Standard & Poor's Corporation and the Egyptian
Institute of Directors in 2010 , which is considered the second index - in terms of chronological order - at the level of emerging markets, and the first in the Middle East and North African markets.EGX launching of that index comes as per its interest for the global modern trends in the capital markets’ indices, which began by focusing on the sustainable development criteria, specially in light of the investors’ trend to link the financial criteria to the non-traditional activities criteria for the companies, such as preserving featured environmental performance and social responsibility’ levels, and following good governance standards.