The general assembly of the Securities Depository Center (SDC) held its seventh ordinary meeting on Wednesday March 29, 2006. The general assembly discussed the SDC’s sixth annual report with contains the chairman’s statement, the most important accomplishments and achievement during 2005, its future plan; in addition to the financial statements and the auditors report.

In his statement, the Chairman, Abdul Hamid Alhayari, indicated that in 2005, the SDC completed the final stage of its development by replacing the paper environment with the electronic environment and referred to the positive role of all SDC’s members and capital market institutions and their effective cooperation with the SDC.

The Chairman outlined the most  accomplishments and achievements of the SDC during 2005 and specifically the implementation of clearing and settlement measures on the basis of Delivery versus Payment (DvP). DvP is considered an important international standard applied in capital markets where the delivery of sold securities is against payment of their value.

The Chairman pointed out that the SDC continued depositing securities and shareholders in 2005 where the number of deposited shareholders reached  (291) thousand shareholder who own (3.6) billion shares representing a percentage of (94.4%) of the securities. The SDC had finalized the process of transferring the shareholders' registers of public shareholding companies in 2004; thus, the SDC registers and records became the legal evidence of the ownership of deposited securities in accordance with the Securities Law.

The Chairman also said that the SDC registered the shares of new public shareholding companies that became SDC members and shares that resulted from increase or decrease of capital of public shareholding companies or those that resulted from mergers during 2005.

He also mentioned that the SDC will put in place a strategic plan for the upcoming three years which will take into consideration the internal and external dimensions to increase the efficiency of the SDC in serving its members and fulfilling its responsibilities which will enable the SDC to provide further services to investors in Jordanian securities.

In his closing, the Chairman thanked the previous members of the board of directors: Mr. Loay Mismar, Mr. Samir Habib, the Arab Bank, The Jordanian Electric Power, Jordan Investment & Finance Bank, Jordan French Insurance and Union Bank for Savings & Investment for their productive efforts  in serving and developing the SDC’s operations.  Noting that the SDC general assembly held an extraordinary meeting in October, 2005 to elect new members of the board of directors. The Jordan French Insurance and the Union Bank for Savings & Investment were re-elected as members of the board and both Mr. Abdul Hamid Alhayari and Mr. Samir Habib were re-appointed; in addition, the Real Estate & Investment Portfolio, Middle East Complex For Engineering, Electronics & Heavy Industries and Tanmia Securities Co. were elected as new members.

The SDC’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Samir Jaradat afterwards gave a brief explanation on the mechanism of implementing DvP where the ownership of sold deposited securities is transferred between the seller and buyer accounts maintained by their brokers via book-entry. In 2005, approximately (2.5) billion shares were transferred by virtue of (2.4) million trading contracts with a total market value of (JOD 16.8) billion. The CEO urged shareholders to provide companies in which they own securities with their personal  information and data and especially their addresses.

The CEO stated that financial settlements between brokers are conducted through the SDC by money transfers from the brokers’ accounts at their banks to SDC’s settlement account at the Central Bank of Jordan (Settlement Bank) through the RTGS-JO. Consequently; the SDC transfers these funds to the brokers who should receive funds to their bank accounts within specific timeframes.

On the technical development level, the SDC updated its “Issuers System” -Private Subscription- to enable public shareholding companies to authenticate private subscriptions directly on the SDC database and make the process of registering the shares as a result of  capital increase faster in preparation for listing on the Amman Stock Exchange.

In addition, the SDC developed a special system for local custodians called the "Custodian System". This system will enhance the role of custodians in the market. The SDC also created a special electronic mailbox (e-mail address) for each member and other related parties in order for members to receive correspondences and memos in a fast and easy way to allow them to take the necessary measures.

 The CEO mentioned that the SDC is currently updating its website to enrich it with further information and data about the Jordanian capital market in general and information and data related to the SDC members; thus, providing a rich source of information and data to investors, researchers and others. The SDC will further provide investors, through its new website, with an extremely important service that will enable them to observe their investments easily through inquiring on their balances of shares and their distribution in different accounts; in addition to inquiring about their ownership balances and movements that occur to those shares.

The SDC will work during 2006 to complete the development of the Pledgee System and provide it to banks (SDC members) to enable them to better serve their clients. The SDC will also transfer its current disaster recovery site to another location to guarantee the maintenance of the information and facilitate its retrieval in emergency cases. The SDC will also implement a document management system to mange and maintain documents to increase the SDC efficiency and enable it to better serve its member and investors in Jordanian securities.