New Delhi: The Karachi-based Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) has sold 40% strategic shares to a Chinese consortium at a deal valued at $85 million, Dawn reported on Friday.

The Chinese consortium comprises three Chinese exchanges — China Financial Futures Exchange Company Limited (lead bidder), Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

Together they will take up 30% of the strategic stock while two local financial institutions — Pak-China Investment Company Limited and Habib Bank Limited — will pick up 5% each, the maximum permitted to a single institution under the regulations, the newspaper said.

The first such sale of strategic interest in a bourse in the regional markets. Through the deal, the Chinese bourse has also made its first foray in an acquisition outside China.

“The foreign investor will be expected to bring in investment, experience, technological assistance and new products,” Dawn quoted an official at the stock exchange as saying.

A senior analyst concurred and pointed out that at the moment, the local bourse was depending almost entirely on just one product — ready cash market. There were no ‘options’ trading and futures were almost non-active. “All that could change giving the market a new international look with the entry of such an offshore ‘anchor’ investor,” he told Dawn.