{"id":400245,"date":"2026-01-31T08:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T08:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/400245\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T08:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T08:10:10","slug":"indonesias-top-financial-regulator-quits-in-wake-of-market-turmoil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/400245\/","title":{"rendered":"Indonesia\u2019s top financial regulator quits in wake of market turmoil"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/p>\n

The heads of Indonesia\u2019s financial regulator and stock exchange have resigned following two days of market turmoil that was sparked by warnings of a possible downgrade by index compiler MSCI.<\/p>\n

Mahendra Siregar, chair of the Financial Services Authority, and Iman Rachman, president-director of the Indonesia Stock Exchange, stepped down on Friday. Their resignations came after the country\u2019s main stock index tumbled as much as 16 per cent in two days this week on a report from MSCI citing \u201cfundamental investability issues\u201d in the market.<\/p>\n

The regulator said Siregar\u2019s resignation was a \u201cform of moral responsibility to support the creation of the necessary recovery steps\u201d, while the exchange said Rachman would step down \u201cas a form of accountability over the condition of the Indonesian capital market in the past few days\u201d.<\/p>\n

Three other senior officials at the regulator, including the head of capital markets supervision, also resigned.<\/p>\n

Their departures came as the government said it would raise the limit on investment by pension funds and insurers in the stock market to 20 per cent of their assets from 8 per cent, part of a series of measures aimed at improving liquidity and addressing MSCI\u2019s concerns.<\/p>\n

Shares rose 1.2 per cent on Friday after the announcements. They were down 7 per cent since the start of the week.<\/p>\n

The market turmoil began after MSCI said it had found issues in the exchange\u2019s data feed of publicly traded shares and warned that Indonesia<\/a> could be reclassified from an emerging to a frontier market if no resolution was made by May.<\/p>\n

That statement caused shares to fall more than 7 per cent on Wednesday and triggered a 30-minute trading halt.<\/p>\n

The index then fell as much as 10 per cent<\/a> on Thursday after Goldman Sachs cut its ratings on Indonesian stocks, saying the threat of losing emerging market status was \u201clikely to prompt significant selling\u201d.<\/p>\n

In response to the rout, the chair of Indonesia\u2019s Financial Services Authority on Thursday said it would raise the free-float requirement for listed companies to 15 per cent.<\/p>\n

Indonesia has long faced questions around concentrated ownership of publicly listed companies, especially for conglomerates controlled by billionaires.<\/p>\n

In its announcement, MSCI said many investors \u201cexpressed significant concerns\u201d about the way shareholders were categorised by an Indonesian data provider, during a consultation over Indonesian securities\u2019 free float.<\/p>\n

Recommended<\/p>\n

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MSCI cited opacity in shareholding structures and \u201cconcerns about possible co-ordinated trading behaviour\u201d.<\/p>\n

The turmoil in Indonesian stocks comes amid broader uncertainty over the country\u2019s economic outlook and fiscal situation under President Prabowo Subianto, who has pledged to increase social spending even as government revenues have dropped.<\/p>\n

The rupiah, which weakened as much as 0.4 per cent against the dollar on Friday, has been trading close to all-time lows, fuelled by concerns over central bank independence after Prabowo nominated his nephew<\/a> as its deputy governor. The nomination was confirmed by parliament this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400246,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-400245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}