Canada Makes History

This week is an exceptional week for the Aequitas NEO Exchange and the Canadian Capital Markets overall.

For the first time ever, a provider of Canadian ETFs announced its intent to migrate ETF listings from the incumbent Toronto Stock Exchange to another Canadian stock exchange: NEO.

BlackRock Canada announced its intent to migrate 5 iShares funds, consisting of 12 ETF listings, to NEO in the 4th quarter of 2016.

This is significant for us at NEO, for a number of reasons:

• It is a another strong vote of confidence in our capabilities and the value we provide, after our initial Invesco Canada PowerShares ETF listing
• It confirms that NEO is part of the international club of senior stock exchanges where ETFs are listed
• It demonstrates that migrating from one senior Canadian stock exchange to another one is not just theory.

It is also important for the Canadian Capital Markets overall because it firmly establishes NEO as a full-fledged competitive force in the Canadian senior stock exchange arena:

• Competition in the trading of Canadian listed ETFs, where NEO handles between 20% and 25% of all volume, already allows the industry to benefit from more innovation and less monopolistic behaviors
• By now being able to truly experience competition in the ETFs listings space, these benefits will be further amplified for investors, issuers and their dealers.

The US has benefitted from a strong competitive stock exchange landscape for many years and, while they may experience their own challenges, it is that unique competition driven innovation that always keeps them in a leadership position across the globe.

Does this mean we have now addressed all issues here in Canada? No, absolutely not. We are still facing unacceptable issues with market data, where the lack of a consolidated view across all Canadian marketplaces can lead to uninformed investment decisions and issuers being unable to fully benefit from the exposure of a public listing. We also still lack competition in the listing of corporate securities, leading to a suboptimal experience for many of them.

The good news is that at NEO we are far from having finished the work to be done. We will continue to work diligently towards providing the right solutions to all these shortcomings. History is not a one day event, it develops over time. And with our fire and drive to enhance fairness, liquidity, transparency and efficiency in the Canadian markets, there should be no doubts that we will get there.