Click here to view an edited video
Since the Asian financial crisis of 1997, policy-makers among the 10 nations comprising the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) have paid lip-service to the concept of greater pan-ASEAN economic integration. In January 2009, however, a landmark agreement among ASEAN's securities regulators, to fully integrate ASEAN capital markets by 2015, signalled renewed ambitions to realise the long-standing vision. February 2009's unveiling of the Capital Market Implementation Plan blueprint in Bangkok was swiftly followed by the news that the five most progressive ASEAN nations, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, planned to integrate their equity markets in a move that seemed to underline ASEAN's new-found resolve to combine forces.
