Market for the masses

The Warsaw Stock Exchange is preparing to launch a new index for listing innovative companies. The move is intended to promote advanced technology branches as part of WSE's "Innovative Economy on the WSE" program to be launched this month. The bourse is holding talks with Index Copernicus International (ICI) on the creation of criteria and tools for assessing companies' innovativeness.

The new innovative index will replace the existing TechWig index, which is due to be shelved next month.

The bourse has also launched a media campaign to raise the social awareness about financial-market mechanisms. The campaign consists of six spots to be aired in several TV and radio stations to target potential individual investors. 

"I expect we will reach anybody who shows interest in the bourse, even those who have based their attitude to it on resentments or stereotypes," president of the WSE Ludwik Sobolewski told the press last week, adding that it is crucial to "speak about the laws of the market [and] to cut through bad stereotypes or ignorance as to what the bourse is."

The WSE's external communication will also be enhanced by a Council for Education and Information Orderliness (Rada Edukacji i Rzšdu Informacyjnego), a body to supervise the flow of information, which launched last month to spread best practices for informing the public about the situation of the financial markets and drawing prognoses. The council is expected to hold its first meeting this week.

The bourse has also announced it would launch a Warsaw Institute of Capital Market (Warszawski Instytut Rynku Kapitałowego) in H2 this year, an institution for training financial market professionals. The institute will target its offer to analysts, lawyers and journalists covering the stock exchange. Apart from the WSE, the National Depository for Securities, the Polish Financial Supervision Authority, investment companies and local government organizations have all been invited to participate in the education process.