PSE chairman Justice Jose C. Vitug said the PSE will approach the Asian and Oceanian Stock Exchanges Federation (AOSEF) for help in standardizing the listing requirements and disclosure rules of member-exchanges.

"Standardization will make it easy for cross-border listing to gain momentum," Justice Vitug said.

AOSEF has 18 memberexchanges, including the Tokyo Stock Exchange and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and Clearing, which are two of the world’s biggest bourses. The Korea Exchange, Taiwan Stock Exchange, Singapore Stock Exchange and the PSE also belong to this group.

PSE president Francis Lim believes many firms that are potential candidates for cross-border listing entertain doubts about the wisdom of participating in a cross-border listing program.

He said this is because they fear they might be required to prepare different checklists for listing in each of these different stock exchanges.

"Once they are listed they might be required to prepare different disclosures for different exchanges," Lim noted adding that "If this is the situation now in Asia, definitely the hassles involved are not conducive to crossborder listing."

Justice Vitug said the PSE’s cross-border listing initiative forms part of its program to develop the local stock market. The PSE Board will pursue the cross-border listing plan hand-in-hand with its reform program.

"The PSE Board will continue to actively pursue its reform program and further improve the operations of the Exchange, not only as a self-regulatory organization but also as a profit-oriented business," he said.

Vitug said "there is always room to improve and professionalize our operations, especially in the area of enhancing our rules and regulations to protect investors’ money. These steps are equally necessary to promote more trading for the benefit not only of investors."

He earlier said that technological advances, along with the global drive to observe good corporate governance practices, are creating an ideal environment and desirability for cross-border listing.

"Cross-border listing will allow investors to trade the shares of a foreign firm here. If the company operates a project here, it also makes sense for it to just list its shares in our local stock market," Vitug explained.

"I understand we have many hi-tech electronic companies that operate here. Their parent firms abroad are listed but their subsidiaries here are not," Vitug said. "We should actively court the listing of these particular companies."(JAL)