19 August 2008

BEIRUT: Activity on the Beirut Stock Exchange increased by 141 percent to $861 million, up to the end of July, said data released by the bourse and published in the latest edition of Byblos Bank's Lebanon This Week. Total volume reached 36.2 million shares through July 2008, an increase of 41 percent year-on-year, while aggregate turnover amounted to $861 million, up 141.4 percent from a turnover of $356.7 million in the same period last year.

Market capitalization rose by 91.7 percent to $15.9 billion, of which 58.9 percent was in banking stocks and 37.6 percent in Solidere stocks.

The market-liquidity ratio was 5.4 percent, compared to 4.3 percent for the same period of 2007.

Solidere accounted for 67.2 percent of aggregate trading volume, followed by banking stocks with 32.3 percent, industrial stocks with 0.42 percent and trading and investment funds' stocks with 0.05 percent. In terms of the value of shares traded, Solidere accounted for 83.3 percent of aggregate value in the first seven months of 2008, followed by banking stocks with 16.9 percent, industrials with 0.3 percent, investment funds with 0.2 percent and trading with 0.003 percent. - The Daily Star