Under this consultancy agreement SGX, through its wholly owned subsidiary SGX-International (SGX-I), will provide overall guidance on the management and operations of BSE through training and knowledge transfer. This is to enhance BSE's competitiveness in the region by increasing its operational efficiency.

Mr Seck Wai Kwong, Senior Executive Vice President/Chief Financial Officer of SGX and Chairman of SGX-I said, "SGX looks forward to sharing our best practices and knowledge with BSE to further enhance their product and service offerings to market participants."

Mr Fouad Rashid, Director of BSE said, "As SGX is one of the most developed exchanges in Asia Pacific, we hope that SGX's extensive experience will enable us to increase our operational efficiency in a way that will support the Exchange's capabilities to play a greater role in the development of the country, especially those related to implementing Bahrain's economic vision that was recently released. We aim to attract more listings and encourage financial institutions to provide investors with more exchange-traded products on our platform."

The agreement was signed by Mr Seck and Mr Rashid in the presence of H.E. Rasheed Al Maraj, Governor of the Central Bank of Bahrain and Chairman of the BSE; and Mr Heng Swee Keat, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

This consultancy agreement builds on the earlier Memorandum of Understanding signed between SGX and BSE on 14 October 2008 to explore areas of collaboration to benefit the financial services industries in Singapore and Bahrain.