HOW WILL THE BEST EXECUTION RULE AFFECT INVESTORS?

for over 100 years, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) operated as the sole exchange in South Africa, except for a few competitors over the years that either went bust (the Union Exchange in 1951) or got acquired by the JSE (the SA Futures Exchange in 2001), thereby cementing its de facto monopoly on both primary and secondary capital markets across a range of securities, spanning equities, derivatives, and debt markets.

Brokers have therefore predominantly looked to the JSE for the best possible result for clients when trading in securities on behalf of those clients. But the JSE’s monopoly has since been challenged and disrupted again in recent times with the arrival of new competitor exchanges such as A2X Markets, 4AX, ZARX and the Equity Express Securities Exchange (EESE).

This increase in the number of exchanges in the local market involving the same authorised users