C5 Accelerate hosts BHB as part of their Policy Hack Series

Manama, Mar. 27 (BNA): C5 Accelerate, in partnership with Tamkeen, hosted Shaikh Khalifa bin Ebrahim AlKhalifa, Bahrain Bourse (BHB)’s CEO for the fifth edition of C5’s POLICY HACK series. The event, which took place on Tuesday discussed how the Fourth Industrial Revolution combined with effective regulation and supervision, can expand the scope, scale, and reach of financial services and startups in particular. Shaikh Khalifa addressed BHB’s role in enabling high growth businesses, regulations related to listing such companies on the stock exchange, and how that relates to strengthening the entrepreneurial landscape and contributing to economic growth. Shaikh Khalifa also touched on the investor-centric services that BHB is currently offering or planning to roll-out, especially through the launch of myShare Card, along with BHB’s collaboration with various retail banks to offer the Bahrain Trade Platform to their respective clients. “Over the past couple of years, Bahrain Bourse has focused its efforts to adopt digital transformation strategies and practices in order to facilitate investors’ access to the market and thereby enhance the liquidity of the market and enable achievement of a market status upgrade,” he said. “BHB’s recent initiatives, including the online trading platform (Bahrain Trade) and myShare card all go in line with our efforts to develop the investment environment in securities by benefiting from the facilities provided by technology and applying best practices. Further, the revamp of BIM in collaboration with Tamkeen has enabled us to expedite and govern the process of listing more effectively which have produced efficient results immediately.” “Funding and access to capital remains a real challenge for growing Bahraini companies so it is exciting to see BHB innovating its approach to equity markets. The Bourse is increasingly becoming a critical component of the entrepreneurship landscape in Bahrain, especially for growth companies and startups looking to scale, and that is a promising development. We are honoured to host Shaikh Khalifa this evening and hope that these discussions will strengthen our understanding and ability to collaboratively build innovative and alternative growth options for growing businesses from Bahrain and beyond,” Hadyah Fathalla, Executive Director of C5 Accelerate, commented. This event was planned ahead of the Global Entrepreneurship Congress (GEC) spearheaded by Tamkeen on April 15-18. GEC is a global gathering of entrepreneurs, policymakers, startups and investors with the aim to gain insights into new policy ideas, provide startups with the knowledge on how to scale new ventures and to provide valuable networking opportunities.