JSE Limited, Africa’s biggest bourse, posted robust financial results for the year to December 2013, boosted by the upturn in financial market performance and tight cost management, it said on Tuesday.

This indicates that the company is on track to achieving its five-year plan of delivering “integrated trading” and clearing by 2017, Nicky Newton-King, the CEO of JSE Limited, said.

Profit after tax for the period under review surged 68 percent to a “record high” of R507 million ($47m) from R302 million ($28m) in the previous year, the company said.

“As we run the Exchange, we continue to be very mindful of equitably balancing the interests of all stakeholders,” Newton-King said in a statement.

She re-iterated that the long-serving chairman Humphrey Borkum would retire after 11 years at the bourse and over 50 years in the industry.

Nonkululeko Nyembezi-Heita, the former CEO of Africa’s biggest steelmaker, Arcelor Mittal, will replace him.
Nyembezi-Heita joined the JSE Limited board about six years ago after JSE Limited acquired the Bond Exchange of South Africa, another South African Exchange.

Newton-King said Nyembezi-Heita will start her duties after the JSE Limited’s annual general meeting in May this year.