Indonesian stock exchange CEO resigns after $84 billion market wipe out

In a release, the Indonesian Stock Exchange said Rachman had stepped down, taking responsibility for “recent market condition,” without elaborating.

At a press conference Rachman said that “I hope this is the best decision for the capital market. May my resignation lead to improvements in our capital market,” according to Reuters.

“Hopefully, the index, which opened positively this morning, will continue to improve in the coming days,” he added.

MSCI on Tuesday warned of a potential downgrade of the country to “frontier” market status, from emerging market by MSCI, highlighting concerns over trading transparency.

“Investors highlighted that fundamental investability issues persist due to ongoing opacity in shareholding structures and concerns about possible coordinated trading behaviour that undermines proper price formation,” MSCI said late Tuesday.

The Jakarta Composite rose 1.18% on Friday, after losing 7.35% on Wednesday and another 1.06% on Thursday.

A day before his resignation, Rachman told CNBC that Indonesian regulators had held discussions with MSCI, focused around enhancing data transparency, particularly around free float and ownership structures.

On Thursday, Indonesia’s financial regulator said it would double the free float requirement on listed firms to 15%, responding to MSCI concerns about transparency on the country’s stock exchange, according to Reuters.

The IDX on Wednesday released a statement saying that it recognized the feedback by MSCI as a “valuable part” of its efforts aimed at enhancing the credibility of Indonesia’s capital market. “We are fully committed to making our best efforts to increase the weighting of Indonesian equities in the MSCI indices,” IDX said.

Speaking to CNBC’s JP Ong, Pandu Sjahrir, chief investment officer at sovereign wealth fund Danatara, said that “what happened the last two days is almost like a good cold plunge…the market kind of panicked a bit. And what happens after a cold plunge? Usually, you fix yourself up and you become refreshed.”

Indonesia’s market has about one billion dollars in liquidity per day, Pandu said, adding that the market needed a liquidity of 8 to 10 times that amount.

“The only way to do it is through transparency. We have to be able to listen to what the market says, and don’t be defensive.”