BALTIC Exchange chief executive Mark Jackson and Baltic Exchange Asia head Lu Su Ling have visited Melbourne for a lunch organised with Maritime Industry Australia.
Mr Jackson has a strong connection with Australia. He grew up in Sydney and has family in Melbourne.
The Baltic Exchange was purchased by the Singapore Exchange three years ago, strengthening its connection with the Asia-Pacific region, something upon which Mr Jackson is keen to build.
“The Baltic has been positioning itself as, and I think achieving, a global membership organisation.
“We have a small office in Singapore and they really have relied on… people coming to Singapore to engage with us,” Mr Jackson said, when asked about the purpose of the visit.
“Mining companies move their offices [to Singapore] and a lot of people move their offices there because Singapore attracted business,” he said.
“But the fact is, there is still… quite an active shipping community here in the bulk side of things in Australia and we want to see if we can capture some of that interest and provide services from the Baltic.”
Mr Jackson also spoke of the impact of the acquisition by the Singapore Exchange.
“What has changed is that the Baltic is now owned by a regulated entity that is also a regulator of its own marketplace,” he said.
“So we also put in place stricter audit controls which also led into us now having an application to our own regulator (the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK) and I think that having SGX and their knowledge of marketplaces process procedure has helped us ‘up our game’.”
