Our markets are delivering a compelling performance to both developed market and emerging market peers, closing long-standing discounts and unlocking value.

SA has emerged from more than a decade of structural and macro challenges, and now presents a strong and concerted effort to reform and grow our economy, underpinned by a comprehensive government plan and enabled by committed public-private collaboration.

The newly established Government of National Unity (GNU) is a strong promise for meaningful change for the country. This has embedded the value proposition of SA as a powerful destination to raise capital, further enhanced by the deep liquidity in secondary markets.

Between April 2024 and now (at the time of writing), our market sentiment has shifted positively, with the JSE’s Top 40 Index up 11.4%, the bond market seeing $4.5 billion in foreign inflows, and a rand appreciation of more than 6%.

Key government bonds have also rallied by more than 11%. And, despite this performance, SA’s listed companies still offer a discount of around 15% compared to global emerging market indices.

As the largest stock exchange in Africa, the JSE remains committed to supporting the continued growth of SA’s economy, serving as a strategic financial hub under the GNU. For 137 years, we have offered a reliable and transparent platform for capital raising and investment, solidifying our status as the ideal investment destination in Africa and beyond. As testament to this, the JSE has shown extreme resilience, raising R968 billion in capital over the past decade.

Additionally, the exchange has placed innovation at the core of our strategy, ensuring we serve the needs of investors, both domestically and globally, as well as issuers.

We have launched several digital transformation projects, including a collaboration with Amazon Web Services to modernise our core systems.

We also recently amended listings rules to establish Prime and General Market segments with fit-for-purpose listings requirements to support issuers. Moreover, our investor protection is world-class, allowing trading to be carried out with confidence.

Information Services continues to be a strategic growth node for the exchange. As such, we have collaborated with DataBP to launch our pioneering cloud marketplace, which is now the central hub for all our data products and services – this solution aims to transform the JSE’s data offerings. DataBP’s advanced platform will enable our new data marketplace to simplify client onboarding, streamline product development and automate data access entitlements and billing processes.

Relations with our investors and stakeholders, both here at home and abroad, are vital to the success of this institution. We held our annual SA Tomorrow investor roadshow in New York to make an investment case for SA, together with the South African Reserve Bank, finance and electricity ministries, as well as listed companies. We then bookended the year with a UK Macro Day to engage UK investors.

As always this has been a journey undertaken together with our various stakeholders and we are very grateful for your trust and your support in walking this road with us. Next year will undoubtedly bring its own challenges and opportunities, and we look forward to meeting them head on.

Dr Leila Fourie
JSE Group Chief Executive Officer
October 2024