Honourable Prime Minister, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, it is indeed a matter of pride for us to be here at this momentous occasion for the inauguration of the ISE Towers.

With the inauguration of the ISE Towers, the Exchange is witnessing the fulfillment of the dream- the journey towards which was started few years ago.

Today, we are really grateful to the Almighty for enabling us to complete the major construction work of the building within a short span of of almost three and a half years, which itself is quite significant considering the overall state of the construction industry in Pakistan.

Your Excellency, another noteworthy aspect of the ISE Towers is that it is the first building completed post 2005 earthquake in Islamabad that has been designed and built under zoning regulation 3 to withstand a high intensity earthquake as opposed to the required zoning regulations 2A. Therefore the completion of ISE Towers with enhanced earthquake resistance material demonstrates our commitment to construct a safe, secure and a strong building.

Your Excellency, while designing a building to serve as a stock exchange, we all had one thing in our mind; and that was to consider the ways that investors engage in the capital markets, and to develop an infrastructure that can best address the needs of the investors.

As a market center, we realized that the first and foremost need of an investor is to get the best possible background information and knowledge before he trades in the market.

The second need of an investor is to ensure that the companies that he invests in are run efficiently enough so as to provide him with the prospect of growth in his investments.

The third need of an investor is to ensure the safekeeping of his investments.

The fourth need of an investor is to get the best execution of his orders, and an efficient service at the lowest possible cost.

The final requirement of an investor is to have this confidence that should he be cheated, wronged or fraudulently dealt with in the market, he has a reliable recourse to seek the redressal of his complaints.

After having assessed the general needs of an investor, we resolved to design a market center that is able to ultimately serve our customers in the best of ways. It is because of this reason that the ISE is on course to invest in certain unique facilities which find no parallel in the history of stock markets in Pakistan.

Your Excellency, in order to serve the foremost need of information and knowledge to an investor, ISE has taken three broad initiatives.

In first of such initiatives, ISE shall be the only exchange to provide an investor’s hotline, which the investors would be able to dial to get some basic information in pre-recorded formats. This has been aimed at assisting the investors in making prudent investment decisions and to educate them about the basic market fundamentals.

The second initiative would make the ISE Towers as the only exchange building in Pakistan having a dedicated Investors Information Center and a resource library so as to enhance the shareholders understanding of our markets.

As no modern stock exchange building is considered complete without adequate market information display system.  Therefore, the third initiative of keeping our investors informed relates to our investment in providing the most accurate, speedier and up to date market information to the investors.

Towards this end, the ISE has not only installed the largest LED screen ever erected in Pakistan, but has plans to provide such information to our investors in every nook and corner of the building. The purpose of this information display system is to keep our investors abreast of the latest market trends of both the local as well as other international markets.

Your Excellency, such investments are in line with our thinking that an informed investor is a prudent investor who knows how to make appropriate choices and exercise his rights so as to promote corporate democracy and accountability in the country.

Mr. Prime Minster, being the organizations promoting investors interest, stock exchanges have a real agenda to work for the empowerment of the shareholders so that they can meaningfully influence the broad strategic decisions at the companies that they own.

This is the agenda that remains our priority and the focus of all our investments not only in this building but also in all the systems that we will put in place subsequently.

This is what compels us to promote an adequate structure of corporate governance in the country so as to address the second basic need of an investor. In this regard, the task force on the corporate governance of the companies has finalized its recommendations and the same shall be adopted by us as part of our listing regulations.

As regards fulfilling the third need of an investor to ensure the safety of the shares owned by an investor, the SECP, the stock exchanges and the CDC have already put together the latest sub account opening form to ensure that no broker is able to misuse the shares belonging to an investor as has happened in the latest past.

Your Excellency, as part of fulfilling the fourth basic need of an investor, ISE is already on course to deploy the latest trading technology to help the investors in making smart choices based on algorithmic trading models.

Besides this, our investment in making the ISE Towers as a high tech building is also aimed at the same goal. As the financial services industry is heavily dependent on the speedier data communication, therefore ISE Towers is the only community office building which shall provide wi-fi connectivity and end to end fiber based connectivity with multiple layers of redundancies in our communication link ups.

In order to fulfill the last and the most important need for the redressal of an investor’s complaints, the ISE is on path to provide a web based tracking tool to an investor so as to enable him to follow the progress on his complaint. This system again would be the first of its kind to be made available to the investors by any stock exchange in Pakistan.

Your Excellency, its no doubt that we are the smallest and the youngest stock exchange in the country, but the undertaking of this project shows our resolve that we aim to provide a marketplace of choice to the investors.

Towards this end, our future initiative is aimed at broadening the base of investors, which is focused on two fold strategic investments; one concentrating on the establishment of brick and mortar infrastructures in the shape of small and medium trading centers in different cities of Pakistan; and second on enabling our investors to get the best priced executions of their trading orders. Whereas towards this end, ISE had already established a unified trading platform alongside Lahore Stock Exchange, however we remain in contention to force the largest stock exchange to open its access so that all trading centers can ensure the availability of best price to their investors anywhere in Pakistan.

For this purpose and for the boarder goal of deepening our markets, we stand committed to work with other stock exchanges, the regulators and government in future as well, and assure you of our best cooperation in all times to come.

In the end, I would like to thank you Mr. Prime minister and all our valuable guests for sparing your precious time to join us for the inauguration of ISE Towers. I would also like to thank all those people from the ISE community whose involvement with the decision making process for the ISE Towers has made it possible to see this day. Amongst such persons, I would like to especially thank Mr. Amanaullah Khan, Mr. Abdul Waheed Jan, Mr. Najam Ul Haq Malik, Mr. Omer Iqbal Pasha, Sheikh Mohammad Shabbir, Col ® Iftikhar Ahmed, Javaid Hussain Shah Bokhari etc., to name a few. Also I would like to thank the entire team of contractors, our consultants and the management team of ISE for their efforts in the successful completion of the ISE Towers.

Thank you Mr. Prime Minster and Thank you all for being here today.