Shahr Financial Group organized a consultative meeting with capital market stakeholders on the topic of “Urban Financing Through Bond Issuance” to gather expert opinions and facilitate coordination with relevant institutions. The event took place on Sunday, April 27, 2025.
According to Ali Bigzadeh, CEO and board member of Shahr Financial Group, given the need for municipalities to increasingly leverage the capital market’s potential for financing and the issuance of participation bonds as stipulated in the budget law, Shahr Financial Group, as the capital market arm of Bank Shahr, has taken on the role of facilitating these bond issuances since last year. This is particularly significant as Bank Shahr serves as the guarantor for a substantial portion of these bonds.
To this end, Shahr Financial Group organized the event to collect insights from market participants regarding urban financing, relay these perspectives to municipalities and the responsible organization, and foster a common framework for effective collaboration between these institutions and municipalities.
Bigzadeh further elaborated that, in addition to representatives from the Securities and Exchange Organization and Iran’s Farabourse, over 40 financial institutions participated in the event and shared their views on measures needed to streamline financing, enhance the marketability of these bonds, and consequently reduce municipalities’ financing costs. Key suggestions included simplifying and expediting the process of listing these bonds on the stock exchange, initiating secondary market trading, and ensuring municipalities’ financial discipline in paying fees to underwriters and market makers. One of the most significant requests from market participants was the establishment of a dedicated fund for municipal bonds, a proposal initially put forward by Shahr Financial Group last year.
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