BHM Capital connects to Astana International Exchange as a market making member via Tabadul

Analysis: the rule change that makes this announcement legible

BHM Capital describes the tie-up as expansion. AIX’s own half-year statement supplies the rule change the arrangement sits against. Among the changes AIX made to its Business Rules during the period was “a revised liquidity framework based on mandatory market making”, paired with a widening of the direct-listing regime to cover all equity issuers. Once market making stops being optional and becomes compulsory, the exchange needs a bench of registered market makers in place before the obligation lands on issuers. A UAE broker registering first from its jurisdiction, within weeks of that framework going live, sits on the supply side of that shift; neither document states a connection between the two.

Scale is a separate question from strategy. Six-month turnover across the whole exchange, USD 1.084 bn, is the pool any single market maker’s spread income draws from, and BHM Capital has disclosed nothing about how many of the 398 listed securities it intends to quote. Because the procedures register market makers instrument by instrument rather than venue-wide, the number that would actually matter commercially, approved instruments and their turnover, stays private. Nothing in either document lets anyone size the revenue this brings BHM Capital.

What has been established is permission, not activity. Clearing the functional trading assessment and the connectivity assessment shows the firm can run the account regime and quote under AIX rules, a real, tested bar, and the “first in the UAE” framing is as much about the route as the role, since access runs through Tabadul rather than direct AIX membership. That route brings new obligations BHM Capital did not carry before: funding inventory on a venue in a different currency and time zone, a segregated account that penalises a negative balance, and quoting duties that can be eased only with AIX’s agreement.

Two disclosures would settle whether any of this has moved: BHM Capital’s own interim financials, which would show market making revenue and inventory commitments, and the AIX monthly market overview, which would show turnover in any instrument the firm actually quotes. Neither the DFM notice nor the AIX half-year statement shows that trading has started.

What the documents say

BHM Capital Financial Services PSC (DFM: BHMCAPITAL) notified the Dubai Financial Market on August 7th, 2026 that it had become the first UAE financial institution to connect to the Astana International Exchange as a Market Making Member, via the Tabadul platform run by the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange. There is no pricing, no covered-instrument list and no start date in the release; the obligations attached to the role are set out in the AIX rulebook rather than in the notice.

What the disclosure says

BHM Capital called the connection a strategic milestone in its regional expansion, describing Tabadul as the connectivity platform that links participating regional and international capital markets and framing its new role as a contribution to market liquidity, price discovery and a more active trading environment.

Chief Executive Officer Abdel Hadi Al Sa’di called the step “an important milestone” in the firm’s regional growth and linked it to expanding market making capability and strengthening ties between regional markets, placing the move inside a broader strategy of partnerships, infrastructure and technology investment.

BHM Capital is a private joint stock company listed on the Dubai Financial Market and regulated by the UAE Capital Market Authority, offering brokerage, market making, asset management, investment banking, liquidity provision and corporate advisory services. The release names Abir Hammad as media contact and names no counterparty issuer, a gap that matters because AIX allows market making arrangements to be sponsored by an issuer as well as run by the member alone.

What the AIX rulebook attaches to the title

The obligations behind “Market Making Member” sit in the AIX Market Maker Registration and Supervision Procedures, published November 2024. A candidate must already hold AIX Trading Member and AIX CSD Participant status with a dealer licence, and must further satisfy AIX that it manages conflicts between market making and its other trading activity in writing, that its technical connectivity is adequate, and that its professional and organisational capabilities fit the role.

Registration is not a formality. Applications go to the Market Operations Department and pass through compliance review, a functional trading assessment test, a non-functional IT assessment and legal sign-off. AIX targets 5 Business Days to process an initial application and 2 Business Days for a follow-on application covering additional instruments. Under AIFC AMI Rule 3.1.4(d), AIX notifies the Astana Financial Services Authority of new market maker arrangements; under Rule 3.1.4(a), every market maker must sign a written agreement with AIX.

Once live, a member must run its market making book through a segregated Market Maker Account, mark its orders as market making in the trading system, and carry enough securities or cash to meet its obligations. Only approved instruments may enter that account, and transfers out go only to the member’s house account, and only to refill inventory or to leave a non-negative net balance. Penalties are spelled out: up to USD 500 per breach for mixing market making with other activity, 2 basis points of any negative net balance for breaching the account regime, settlement fines under the AIX CSD fee schedule, and de-registration in one or all instruments for repeated failures. A member or issuer can buy monthly market making statistics for USD 200 per report.

The procedures also carve out relief. During Extreme Market Conditions agreed with AIX, a market maker may stop quoting, widen its maximum spread or shrink its minimum quantity until conditions ease or the next trading day starts, with written notice to the exchange, and obligations lapse entirely during a trading halt or when compliance becomes impossible for reasons outside the member’s control.

The venue BHM Capital is joining

AIX published its own first-half results on 08.07.2026, a month ahead of the BHM Capital notice. Turnover for the six months to 30 June 2026 reached USD 1.084 bn, roughly double the USD 0.7 bn recorded in the same period of 2025. The Official List carried 398 securities from 196 issuers, with 74 instruments from 53 issuers added during the half. Capital raised in the period totalled USD 3.6 bn, against USD 15 bn since inception. AIX counted 69 trading members, including brokers from Kazakhstan, China, Europe and the Middle East, four of them onboarded during 2026, and ten global custodians holding sub-accounts at the AIX Central Securities Depository, with retail investor accounts through member brokers topping 2.3 million. The AIXQI index closed the half at 2,232.22, up 12.85% year to date across 15 constituents, having hit an all-time high of 2,483.68 on April 20.

AIX was established in 2017 under the Astana International Financial Centre framework; its shareholders are the AIFC, the Shanghai stock exchange, the Silk Road Fund and NASDAQ.