Asia Pacific Stock Exchange
The Asia Pacific Stock Exchange (APX) is a stock exchange with its headquarters in Sydney, Australia. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of the AIMS Financial Group, with a market license granted by the Australian Securities & Investment Commission (ASIC) on 5 November 2013. APX listed its first few companies on 6 March 2014.
History
The exchange began in 1997 as an exempt market operated by Austock. (An exempt market is one the Australian government exempts from the licensing otherwise required for a financial market.)
The first listing was pharmaceutical manufacturer Sigma Pharmaceuticals. At the time it was a cooperative owned by pharmacists, and it wanted to raise capital, but an Australian Stock Exchange listing would have required the owners to give up control (under the ASX "one share, one vote" rule). Austock instead created a structure of separate investor and voting shares for them, and established an exempt market for those shares.
The Austock exempt market through its life listed 22 companies and turned over about $500 million. It included initial listings for the SFE Corporation (owner of the Sydney Futures Exchange) and SPC Ardmona, before they moved to the Australian Stock Exchange.
The exchange in its present form as a licensed stock exchange was established in August 2004 and commenced trading in January 2005. It retained the trading platform software used by the exempt market.