The Bourse de Tunis (Tunis Stock Exchange) and Paris Europlace, the association defending the interests of the Paris financial marketplace, announced in a statement published on 8 July the signing of a memorandum of understanding to in particular, strengthen the sharing of expertise and the support to stock listing of Tunisian SME.

The memorandum, signed during the Paris Europlace International Financial Forum, expresses the ambition of the Tunis marketplace to have its stock market grow in power. Its overall aim is to promote the Tunisian financial environment based on the project of a marketplace with Mediterranean and international ambitions.

This is supported by the prominent position of the Paris stock market, principal entry point to the Euro zone markets, who wishes as a result to enhance its relations with the markets of high growth economies to initiate and develop joint projects and create leverage for its own influence.

The Tunis stock exchange and Paris Europlace identified four defining, complementary directions of converging interest which will be added upon as the relationship evolves.

The first axis is development support for the Tunis financial market, particularly its stock market. Following the example of Paris Europlace, Tunis wants to have market structure, an association representing the diversity of the players of the financial industry.

Paris and Tunis will also cooperate on supporting the Tunisian companies, especially SMEs, in getting listed as well as identifying and developing potential French investments in Tunisia and vice versa.

The fourth axis of cooperation is on research, innovation and financial prospective. With the support of the Institut Louis Bachelier (ILB), French meeting and networking platform which goal is to promote interactions between the research community and economic entities, the vision is to conduct research and analysis on themes of joint interest such as the value chain in finance, the prevention and management of risks, sustainable and liable finance, alternative sources of funding, long term needs financing and long term allocation of assets.

 “The new Tunisia which successfully achieved its democratic and political transition must equip itself with a modern and performing financial market to be able to face up to the economic growth challenges. This agreement with Paris Europlace will allow us to build on our 20 years cooperation with Euronext, to extend it to new development axis and to generate new cooperation opportunities between the players of the two markets”, commented the CEO for the Bourse de Tunis, Bilel Sahnoun, during the signing of the memorandum.