A Tale of Two Markets: DFM and Bahrain Bourse

Prepare Yourself for One of AA's Rants

You bet AA is mad and frankly isn’t going to take it anymore, especially after another frustrating attempt to use the DFM website to do some background research on GFH.  

One of the things that investors generally expect from stock exchanges is information.  Some exchanges make information easy to find and obtain.  Some don’t. 

Now if you were to ask the average Abullah or Trevor from the street about the DFM and BB, the DFM would generally come out as the “better” exchange. 

This post will discuss three areas of shortcoming where the DFM misses the standard of the BB using GFH to illustrate them. 

First, easily accessing corporate disclosures.  

Here are links to the corporate disclosure pages at DFM and BB for GFH.  

The first thing you’ll note is that the BB link goes directly to the Corporate Actions page.  

The DFM link goes to the overview page and you have to select the disclosures tab at the top.   Not a big thing.  Let’s mark this a minor inconvenience.  

More importantly, you’ll note that the BB has a descriptive title for the majority of news items, Dividends Declared, Market Making Report.  

DFM contents itself with the descriptor “Notification”.  Ah, tell me something I didn’t know. It’s a notification, right?  But about what?  

Notification is definitely not helpful and leads to a waste of time if one is trying to research a particular topic or wants to know what disclosures GFH or another issuer has made.  Mark this a major inconvenience.  One that really doesn’t need to be.  

At the DFM, if you click on a particular Notification, you get a second page with a button which tells you how many documents there are on what is still a “secret” topic.  Click on the button.  You get another link to the still “secret” document or documents.  Click on the document to retrieve it.  Your patience is finally rewarded because at this point when the document opens, the “secret” is revealed.  You now know what the “notification” is about.  But للصبر  حدود Mark this a major time waster.  Mark this as highly user unfriendly.   

At the BB, you click on the title and get directed to a page with additional information on the topic and then one further click to get the document.  One less click.  You need not go down the rabbit hole as at the DFM to figure out if this is a notification you’re interested in or not.  

Now suppose you want to go back to the list of disclosures.   

At the DFM, there is no back button.  So if having solved one mystery, you’re up to try your luck with a second Notification, you need to use the “page back” button/arrow on your browser. Alas, you find yourself back to page 1 of the list you’re looking at.  If you’ve picked a period with multiple pages, yes, you go back to page 1 even if you were on page 2, 3, or 4.  Mark this down as ridiculous.   As well not particularly user friendly.  

At BB, there is a back button.  Surely the DFM can afford a back button.  Can’t it?  

Click on it (BB’s back button) and you wind up on the last page you were looking at. 

Second, trading information. 

The DFM apparently believes or knows that its investors really only look back six months from the current date.  

BB caters to an apparently different set of investors who may wish to take longer looks up to 10 years.  But note if you click a longer period, the entire chart might not display in the window so you will have to scroll horizontally.  As well, BB allows customization of its data charts.  Want candles? They got candles.  Want bars? They got bars.  And not just for week-ending Saudis!  Want technicals? They got technicals. 

Surely if BB can do this, DFM with much greater resources can at least do the same.  Why it apparently hasn’t, is one of those Middle Eastern “mysteries”.  

Third, disclosure standards. 

The Central Bank of Bahrain has mandated that an issuer listed in Bahrain or one that has offered a security there must disclose in Bahrain any information required by another exchange even if Bahrain doesn’t otherwise require that disclosure.  

You won’t find the minutes of GFH’s March 2019 AGM and EGM at the DFM.  You will find them at the BB. All that’s at the DFM or all that I could find is a summary of decisions taken.  No insight into debate or shareholder objections.  

This information should be at the DFM.  

Additionally, the DFM or other regulatory authority should mandate a rule similar to the CBB’s.  If you disclose elsewhere, you must disclose on the DFM even if we don’t otherwise require it. 

This year probably in response to GFH’s excellent 2018 adventure (perhaps more accurately misadventure) in treasury share trading, the CBB began requiring that each month’s market making activity be disclosed.  GFH is disclosing this on both the BB and DFM.  

The DFM should consider having a similar rule because this is useful information and not every issuer on the DFM is subject to CBB regulations. 

Does all this mean that the DFM is not a good exchange?  No, what it means in standard financial advice terms is that the “DFM needs to up its game”.  Make its website more user friendly, provide more information, and strengthen some aspects of its disclosure rules.