Foreign brokers dominate PSE trading in September

Turnover value at the Philippine Stock Exchange improved considerably last month due to two big block sales but in terms of broker ranking, no significant change took place as the foreign firms continued to corner the bulk of trading.

PSE records show that for the month of September, market turnover reached P55.255 billion, a sizable increase from P15.68 billion in the same month a year ago. This brought the total value of trades in nine months this year to P280.964 billion, or three percent higher than the P272.277 billion volume a year earlier.

Last month, two major block sales were transacted: the purchase of 6.2 percent of San Miguel Corp. worth P9.63 billion by the SM Group and the share transfer between Metrobank and its subsidiary Globalbank valued at over P6 billion.

Over half or 63 percent of September’s trades, however, were accounted for by two big foreign brokers: ABN Amro Asia Securities and UBS Warburg Securities which have both also figured prominently in the brokers’ tally over the past nine months.

The Swiss-based financial powerhouse UBS Warburg emerged as the top broker in nine months this year, dislodging perennial leader ING Securities and last year’s top broker Philippine Equity Partners, the local conduit of Merrill Lynch.

UBS Warburg cornered 11.71 percent of total trades as of September while ING Securities placed second with 9.97 percent of the value turnover. Closely trailing was September’s top broker ABN Amro with 9.57 percent while Deutsche Regis Partners landed at fourth with 7.01 percent.

Four more foreign brokers followed in succession: J.P. Morgan Securities, Philippine Equity Partners, ATR-Kim Eng Securities and CLSA Philippines while two local brokerage houses – BPI Securities and Abacus Securities – broke into the top 10 list, landing ninth and tenth, respectively.

But further into the next 10 top brokers, the opposite trend was noticeable as only two more foreign brokers – DBS Vickers and KGI Securities – landed in the list at 13th and 14th place, respectively.

The rest were all domestic corporations, led by UCPB Securities, Papa Securities, RCBC Securities, Asiasec Securities, SB Equities, Lucky Securities, AB Capital Securities and PCCI Securities Brokers Corp.