Warsaw eyes new derivatives opportunities

The new chief executive of the Warsaw Stock Exchange has said he will put derivatives at the heart of his strategy as the Polish market finalises the details of a new plan to be announced at the end of October.

Pawel Tamborski, a former under-secretary at the Polish Treasury and banker at Unicredit, took over as chief executive of the Polish bourse in late July and immediately started a strategic review, the results of which will be announced on October 30 when the exchange reports its third quarter performance.

“Commodities and derivatives are two pillars of our future growth,” Tamborski told FOW.

“Currently, our Group offers trading in electricity and natural gas spot and forward contacts and we plan to open trading in cash-settled electricity futures in due course.”

The WSE chief executive added: “Poland is a coal mining country, so it is natural for us to explore opportunities to trade coal as a commodity. This market could play an important role in our Group’s future strategy - but this is just an idea at this stage.”

A push into commodities would help diversify the group’s contract mix which is currently heavily focused on financial products.

The exchange offers a range of futures products including contracts based on its own flagship share index, individual stocks, a range of currency pairs, interest rates and government bonds.

The exchange’s WIG20 index future is its most-traded product followed by its US dollar future, its total stock future and the WIG20 index option, according to FOW data.

Tamborski said he wants to build on this success.

“In the derivatives segment, we are also looking at interest rate futures and equity-based derivatives; we will present results of the review of our strategy at the conference announcing our quarterly results at the end of October.”

The WSE said in September it had pulled the plug on its planned merger with Vienna’s CEE Stock Exchange.

The exchange said in an official statement: “The WSE management board is to focus on the Polish capital market and to fully leverage its potential; therefore, WSE is not considering a capital alliance with CCE Stock Exchange Group at this time."

The WSE added: "The current goals of WSE include organic growth, including development of international business, increasing attractiveness to market participants and enhancing shareholder value".

Speaking to FOW after the official statement, Tamborski added: “I believe that there are still plenty of opportunities, a lot of potential for organic growth at the Warsaw Stock Exchange. We want to strengthen WSE’s regional role by focusing on the pillars of our business.

“We would like to work with other regional exchanges on promoting CEE region. In the future we might consider all types of cooperation with Vienna.”For more on the WSE see FOW Derivatives World CEE.