MillenniumIT facilitates biggest IPO in East Africa

Colombo, Sri Lanka, June 30 2008

Facilitated by MillenniumIT’s Automated Trading System Millennium Exchange, the Nairobi Stock Exchange successfully held its biggest Initial Public Offering (IPO) when shares in Kenya’s Safaricom were traded. Safaricom is the mobile arm of Kenya Telecom and has been a very profitable company, historically. This has been the biggest IPO in East Africa, by far.

A news release by NSE states, ‘the IPO and subsequent trading activity highlights the depth and liquidity of our market and the potential that is yet to be tapped for infrastructure upgrades and development within Kenya and the region. It also highlights the robustness of the NSE trading infrastructure, sourced from MillenniumIT of Sri Lanka’.

MillenniumIT deployed its Automated Trading System at the Nairobi Stock Exchange in September 2006, while their Central Securities Depository (CSD) for Kenya has been operating in a live environment since November 2004. MillenniumIT systems power all the stock exchanges in East Africa, comprising the Nairobi Stock Exchange, Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange and the Uganda Securities Exchange.

President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya, who rang the bell before trading said the IPO's success would add 200 billion shillings (US$ 3.1 billion) to the Nairobi Stock Exchange, sending its total capitalization to over 1 trillion shillings (US$ 15.5 billion). The government raised 51.75 billion shillings (US$ 800 million) from the IPO.

“Given the capacity of our systems, we are definitely geared to support future growth of the Nairobi Stock Exchange to facilitate its growth as a leader in Capital Markets in the East African region,” said Jit Seneviratne, Head of Business Development at MillenniumIT.

About MillenniumIT®

MillenniumIT is a premier technology solutions provider serving the global capital markets industry. MillenniumIT systems are deployed at over 15 sites, including the American Stock Exchange, ICAP, Perimeter Financial (which provides smart order routing to the Canadian equity market) and the London Metal Exchange. MillenniumIT’s suite of capital market products includes Millennium Exchange (multi asset class trading platform), Millennium SOR (smart order router), Millennium Surveillance (market surveillance and regulatory compliance) and Millennium CSD (central securities depository). Visit www.millenniumit.com for more details.

For further information contact:
Mihiri Wikramanayake – mihiri@hype.lk