CONTROVERSY surrounding the trading system at the Cyprus Stock Exchange and its impact on new issues broke out yesterday after newcomer Kyknos opened below its one pound nominal price, the victim of the same technical hiccup that affected Aiantas on its debut last week.
Yesterday afternoon, the CSE announced it had cancelled all dealings in Kyknos after a glitch was traced leaving brokers who had posted low buy orders saddled with higher prices than they had angled for, and vice versa.
The mix-up led to frayed tempers on the trading floor and an urgent meeting with bourse director Nondas Metaxas, who ordered that all trades in Kyknos be cancelled, dealers said.
"It was a technical problem in the system. There was nothing deliberate about it. It was clearly a mistake in the computers," a trader present at yesterday’s session said.
The CSE had announced last week that a mix-up at Aiantas’ debut last Tuesday had resulted in offers for the share being posted as low as one, three and seven cents in pre-trading.
Under data supplied by the CSE during yesterday’s session, Kyknos opened at 93 cents, reached a high of 95 before falling back down to close at 88 cents. It registered a turnover of 1.15 million shares, the second highest on the market.
Elsewhere, the bourse ended broadly stable at 475.68 points, 0.01 points lower.
The CSE all-share index spiked at its opening and was up by some 1.5 per cent in the early minutes before succumbing to profit-taking pressures.
But traders said the market was looking stable and appeared, for the moment, to be beyond the wild oscillations seen last month.
"I think investors have realised that the market is not going to fall even further and this is encouraging them," said one stockbroker.
Banking shares were up strongly in the opening minutes, led by Bank of Cyprus, which was some 31 cents higher before scaling back to £7.75, two cents higher than Friday and on a volume of 374,278 shares.
Laiki was also up seven cents at the outset, but by its close it was two cents higher than Friday at £12.20 on a volume of 91,206 shares.
Traded value was some six million pounds higher than Friday at £20.2 million and on 5,498 deals.
Small-cap Dodoni Investment drew attention yesterday as it dominated trading with 2.33 million shares changing hands. It rose 2.9 cents to close at 22.8. There was no apparent reason for so much turnover in the stock, but traders said that smaller companies were coming into focus as possible vehicles for companies to get into the market through the back door by buying them up.
In other sectors, Cyprus Tourism Development Company climbed 65 cents, or 11.8 per cent to £6.15, bolstered by renewed hopes that the government would reduce its stake in the firm to below 70 per cent.
