Govt to waive RPGT from April 1
By Jimmy Yeow
Email us your feedback at fd@bizedge.com

The Prime Minister said the government has decided to waive real property gains tax throughout the country commencing April 1 to further improve the national property sector.

"This is long-awaited news for developers and investors alike and I hope that it will inject more excitement and dynamism into both the property and financial sectors," Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said at the Invest Malaysia 2007 conference on March 22.

He said the relaxation of the Foreign Investment Committee (FIC) rules to enable foreigners to purchase residential properties above RM250,000 without FIC approval, was received very positively.

“Based on feedback received, the state governments were also told to provide the same relaxation for the purchase of residential property," he said.

Bursa to implement direct access trading

Bursa Malaysia Bhd will be implementing Direct Market Access (DMA), a zero-touch electronic trading solution that enables real time execution of trade orders, in stages the exchange's chief executive officer Datuk Yusli Mohamed Yusoff said.

He said the DMA would be carried out in two phases, whereby under the first, it would see the deployment of Derivatives DMA, which is targeted for completion towards year-end.

The second phase, encompassing equities and derivatives on a single DMA trading platform, will be implemented following the launch of the equities platform of Bursa Trade early next year.

Yusli said DMA effectively reduced the latency of trading order executions from the current system’s five seconds per transaction to a matter of milliseconds.

DMA would be implemented on the back of Bursa Trade – the exchange’s highly scaleable integrated trading system for derivatives and equities that is currently in its second phase of deployment.

The derivatives portion of Bursa Trade was implemented in November 2006, replacing the former derivatives platform (KATS), which had a technical capacity of 10 transactions per second.

Bursa Trade Derivatives has been tested to a capacity of more than 1,000 transactions per second. The equities portion of Bursa Trade is expected to be completed by early 2008.

Yusli said the DMA was essential for the Malaysian capital market to remain competitive in the global investment arena.

“DMA is already well-established in some of the world’s more developed markets like the United States, Europe and Australia.

"Globally, investors' preferences are increasingly aligned to more efficient markets where trades are fully electronic and offer investors more control over their trade,” he said in a presentation at Invest Malaysia 2007 conference on March 22.

“DMA changes the trading landscape of the Malaysian capital market. Investors will enjoy immediate execution of trade orders at a faster speed.

"By automating the trade order process, DMA provides investors greater control over trading execution and strategies,” Yusli added.

“In addition, it also widens the spectrum of trading activities to include higher value added trading activities such as market-making, algorithmic and basket trading to take place,” he said.

Bursa chief operating officer Omar Merican said the DMA would be mainly used by large investors such as fund managers.

“The fund managers can now key in the order instead of going through the dealers and normally when you pay a brokerage, you also pay for the dealer’s time to key in your orders. We can expect brokerage rate to be lower but I am not sure what the numbers would be.”

“This will lower the cost for brokers and some of these cost (savings) could be passed on to customers. Both brokers and customers can benefit from the system,” Omar said.

Successful trading calls for the ability to find 2 groups of ill-informed individuals:

1) those gripped by fear and anxious to give up their merchandise (stock) to you too inexpensively

2) those led by greed, willing to take up your merchandise (stock) too expensively

The key buy setup was designed to help the master trade come into the market as a buyer, precisely when the group gripped by fear and fright is anxious to leave the game

This simple entry technique is one of the most powerful concepts in our trading arsenal.

Highway firm Bright Focus proposes RM200m IPO
By Shahriman Johari
ashahriman@nstp.com.my

March 19 2007

BRIGHT Focus Sdn Bhd, a unit of Maju Holdings Sdn Bhd, plans to raise more than RM200 million from the sale of new shares in an initial public offering (IPO) this year, a source said.

right Focus, which is building a RM1.4 billion highway linking Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and the KL International Airport (KLIA) in Sepang, has hired Kenanga Investment Bank to arrange the main board IPO.

The company's IPO has been approved by the Securities Commission and the listing will come under the infrastructure segment, which requires no profit track record.

Bright Focus' listing will be one of the biggest for the local stock exchange this year. The market has had a sluggish start to IPOs despite an early rally that pushed it to a 13-year high recently.

The company plans to offer some 104 million shares under its IPO and the bulk of it, or 72 per cent, will be offered to institutional investors. Retail investors will get the rest.

"The highway is almost finished and they plan to start toll collection in 2008," the source said.

The highway link will initially connect Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya.

Bright Focus holds a controlling 51 per cent in Konsortium Lapangan Terjaya Sdn Bhd (KLT), which has the concession to build and manage the highway for 33 years.

Anson Perdana Bhd holds 30 per cent of the group, while Hi-Summit Construction Sdn Bhd has the remaining 19 per cent stake, according to previous reports.

Construction of the highway is scheduled to be completed by the end of the year, Tihana Yon, senior manager of corporate communications for KLT, told Business Times.

Officials of Maju Holdings did not return calls to comment.

The highway will connect the Middle Ring Road 1 at Jalan Tun Razak in Kuala Lumpur with the Middle Ring Road 2 at the Kesas Highway, KLT said on its website.

It will also be a traffic dispersal link, relieving traffic congestion along the Kuala Lumpur-Seremban Highway at Jalan Tun Razak.