Foreign brokers still dominate trading at PSE

Foreign brokers, particularly from the US and Europe, continue to dominate trading at the Philippine Stock Exchange although a growing number of local brokerage houses have slowly been making inroads into the elite top 20 list.

Based on figures from the PSE’s Corporate Communications Department, foreign brokers lorded it over in terms of trading volume last month, but the domestic brokers have gained the upper hand in numbers, with 12 landing in the list of top 20 leaders for the month.

The emerging trend of more local brokers in the ranking has been defined since last year, as 10 Filipino-controlled securities firms made the cut. They include Philippine Equity Partners (the local arm of financial giant Merrill-Lynch), Abacus Securities, BPI Securities, UCPB Securities and Papa Securities.

In 2001, BPI Securities, UCPB Securities, Abacus Securities, Asiasec Securities and AB Capital Securities were the only locals in the 20 most active brokerage companies.

Still, the dominance of the foreign players at the bourse remain pronounced this year as eight of them paced the entire field, led by Deutsche Regis Partners and ING Securities, with 17.96 percent and 10.91 percent of total trades, respectively.

The Swiss-based UBS Warburg Securities and Korea’s ATR-Kim Eng Securities followed with 6.93 percent and 5.37 percent of aggregate turnover.

Among the locals, BPI Securities captured the highest spot, landing fifth overall with 4.65 percent of total trades last month.

Other leading domestic brokers during the period were Phil-Equity Partners, Abacus Securities, Asiasec Securities, SB Equities, AB Capital Securities, BA Securities and Tower Securities.