In line with the significant objective of internationalizing the Iranian capital market, a group of top officials from the SEO had a meeting with their BaFin counterparts in the headquarters of the BaFin in Frankfurt on September 6th, 2016.
Dr. Shapour Mohammadi, the Chairman of the SEO, headed a delegation from the SEO, including Dr. Ali Saeedi, the Vice-chairman of the Board and Deputy for Supervision on Financial Institutions, Dr. Bahador Bijani, Vice-chairman in International and Foreign Investment Affairs, and Mr. Farhad Morsali, Head of the International Relations Department, to Germany to have a meeting with the President of the BaFin, Mr. Felix Hufeld, and the Chief Executive Director on Securities Supervision and Asset-Management, Ms. Elisabeth Roegele and sign a memorandum of understanding.
The entire attendees in the meeting expressed their willingness and readiness to come into closer contacts to accordingly work jointly on the areas from which both the Iranian and German capital markets can gain more benefits.
Positive about the cooperative ties between the BaFin and SEO, Mr. Hufeld touched upon the long-lasting and deep-rooted liaison between Germany and Iran in different areas such as industry and said that this close relation should be dilated to the financial market, especially, the capital markets as well. Mr. Hufeld stressed that since Germany is an important member of the European Union and also considering the MoU signed between the BaFin and SEO, it can accordingly ease the linkage of the Iranian capital market to the capital markets in Europe. However, he indicated that there are still a couple of constraints in place which should be overcome by both parties’ resourceful strategies and measures.
Ms. Roegele also congratulated the SEO on its official membership into IOSCO and assured that by this membership, the SEO will come into contacts with different regulatory and supervisory authorities across the globe and this can very tangibly contribute to the internationalization of the Iranian market.
Dr. Mohammadi divulged that over 50% of the FPI in Iran belongs to Germany and German-speaking countries and this is an undeniable proof that Germany and Iran share plenty of common grounds and potential to jointly work on. He considered the MoU a milestone and new chapter in the cooperative history of the German and Iranian capital markets. He assured that the MOU will definitely pave the way for a smoother and more facile collaboration between the entities in the German capital markets and those in the Iranian capital market since the top authorities in the German and Iranian capital markets have gotten engaged. He pointed out that the German financial market can cooperate with its Iranian counterpart in diverse areas including, but not limited to, market designing and restructuring, technology, custodianship, dual listing and suchlike.
In the end, the two parties agreed, as the next step, to lay the foundations of the expansion of the bilateral collaboration by forming a working group from which some common grounds and points of mutual interest are elicited for the realization and materialization of the contents of the MoU. In the first step, there will be coming-togethers in the form of joint workshops, both virtual and non-virtual, to jointly share know-how and experience in the relevant fields.
In addition, on the sideline of this meeting with the BaFin officials, the SEO delegates also had meetings with other entities of the German financial markets including Deutsche Bundesbank and Deutsche Borse.
An independent and fully-integrated federal institution with headquarters in Bonn and Frankfurt and supervised by the German Federal Ministry of Finance, the BaFin is the financial regulatory authority for about 2,700 banks, 800 financial services institutions and over 700 insurance undertakings.