A well known critique of corporate environments across the world is that they lack sufficient influence of female leadership. It is often noted that although companies should have certain quotas of women in leadership, they do not, because of the small pool of available talent. Many argue that despite where we are in terms of technological advances and globaisation, the world is still very much behind when it comes to gender equality. It is therefore refreshing to hear of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange’s (JSE) latest executive Director appointment. Donna Oosthuyse, Managing Director and Country Officer of Citigroup will be joining the JSE in August. Nicky Newton-King, CEO of the JSE discusses the appointment and what it means for the JSE. She also gives insights into the challenges facing the JSE given the current environment of listings and indices, and how it plans to overcome them. – LF
ALEC HOGG: Well, the JSE has managed to secure another top lady. It looks like its girl power at our landlord here, at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. The Managing Director and Country Officer of Citi Group, Donna Oosthuyse is set to join the Executive of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. CEO of the JSE, Nicky Newton-King is with us in the studio. I saw Gary Clarke (who was probably the last boy left) has now left. You really have a strong team, but you managed to pluck the best women in South Africa to join you.
NICKY NEWTON-KING: Well, I’m certainly very proud of the fact that we’re able (at the JSE) to attract such extraordinary talent and calibre of people. If you think about that level of depth that is available in this country, and for us as an Exchange, to attract them really speaks to the role that we have to play.
ALEC HOGG: Why have you gone for women mainly, though?
NICKY NEWTON-KING: No, I haven’t actually gone for women. I do think though, that we’re an organisation with quite a large number of senior women and that has a tipping point…
ALEC HOGG: How many men do you have left in your EXCO?
NICKY NEWTON-KING: I have eleven people on my EXCO. I have three men and eight women as it turns out. John Burke runs the listings area. Our CIO is a gent and our major other business areas are run by women.
ALEC HOGG: That’s good. You’re waving a flag that just shows that it is possible, because many of your listed companies say they can’t find…
NICKY NEWTON-KING: Yes, the point is it is possible, and there are some unbelievable women out there. I don’t have all of them, but I certainly do have a particularly special collection of them now. However, I do think there’s this tipping point thing. People know this is an organisation that is driven to perform highly, welcomes diversity of which gender is a part, and I think that once people know that, they start to gravitate towards us as a natural place to perform.
ALEC HOGG: Good luck on the latest acquisition. The concern that one has though, is Steinhoff leaving to go for a primary listing now, in Frankfurt. Glencore, which came here, hasn’t been an overwhelming success – not in the indices, yet. How are you addressing those? In the long-term, those have got to be your big challenges.
NICKY NEWTON-KING: This is absolutely right. Our business is about servicing issuers and investors, and if you think about the issuers – the Steinhoff’s of this world – we need good issuers on our boards. We’re beginning to get some of the issuers that went private equity, back again. We’re going to be welcoming Alexander Forbes on the 24th and so we have got a really good section of issuers. It’s important that we get the types of issuers that investors want to invest in, so the likes of a Glencore are extremely important to our investors. We need enough free float here so that they can actually get into the indices, and that’s part of a conversation we need to have with them because once you have enough free flat, you’re in the indices that automatically creates the tracking attention
ALEC HOGG: New listings are such a good indicator for investors as well, aren’t they. Are you finding – given that the JSE index is in record territory – that you’re getting a lot of interest?
NICKY NEWTON-KING: Not because the index is in record territory, but certainly, you’re seeing the end of the private equity lockups, so those exits are starting to happen. We’re starting to be a place where African issuers are starting to talk to us more seriously I think, more than before. The reality is that this is not a booming issuer space. On the other hand, our job is to make sure that we position the issuers we do have, to the investors in a way that makes them accessible so we run showcases here. We run opportunities for investors to actually engage with issuers. This whole exercise in repositioning the JSE is actually to make it much easier for issuers to get their story out to the investors.
ALEC HOGG: It’s a very important thing that you’ve said now because we’ve both been around for long enough to remember when the JSE was an expensive territory, and I’m talking about the index from an investor’s perspective. The issuers…you just couldn’t handle how many people wanted to list. That’s not the case now, which should also tell us something.
NICKY NEWTON-KING: Yes, I think people have many funding options. We make no apologies for the fact that as the only exchange, we set disclosure standards that allow investors to know a lot about what’s happening with the issues. That’s not always a very easy space for particularly smaller issuers, to feel comfortable. It’s therefore not a place that will attract/ be attractive to every sort of issue, but we do look at the range of products that we have and say ‘how do we increase that range’. It’s not just about issuers. It’s also about things like ETF’s, ETN’s, and bonds etcetera.
ALEC HOGG: Before we finish, this FSB attack on the over-the-counter market – the other exchanges – and forcing them to get a stock exchange license. Might that be a problem in future for you if you get a whole bunch of other stock exchanges that are now being licensed?
NICKY NEWTON-KING: Firstly, I think you have to look at what an exchange is. An exchange provides a facility that matches investors in trading. Everybody should be treated the same. If you run an exchange for certain products and you run an exchange for another product, you should be treated the same so the FSB has to treat all exchanges the same.
ALEC HOGG: So what they’re doing is not bringing competition, but doing the right thing.
NICKY NEWTON-KING: It’s the right thing to do from a competitive landscape perspective. You can’t have some apply to certain rules and others not.
ALEC HOGG: Nicky, thank you. It was lovely to see you.
NICKY NEWTON-KING: It’s a pleasure, Alec.
ALEC HOGG: Nicky Newton-King, our landlord here at the JSE. She’s the Chief Executive of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
