On February 17 the German bank Dresdner Bank AG became the first remote member of the Warsaw Stock Exchange

On February 17 the German bank Dresdner Bank AG became the first remote member of the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE). The bank will be represented on the WSE by its investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DrKW). Hungarian Concorde Securities and Swedish Fisher Partners Fondkommission also filed their applications, which will be discussed at the next meeting of the Supervisory Board. According to WSE representatives, this means that by the end of the year there could be as many as 10 remote members on the stock exchange. "By the end of the year we expect from two to seven new applications for remote membership to be filed. We are already holding talks with a couple of London banks," said Marcin Wójcicki, vice-director of the Listing Department at the WSE. Remote membership gives the foreign brokers direct access to the systems of the WSE without the necessity of their actual physical presence in the country, or local intermediation. The stock exchanges in Prague and Budapest have no remote members. At the largest markets in Europe remote membership is very common, constituting around one-third of all members. According to DrKW representatives, introducing this type of membership, which proved to be very successful on other markets, will greatly benefit the WSE.