Tunisia’s creation of a small-cap alternative market is part of an overall strategy that aims to promote financial markets as a complementary alternative to stock market financing of small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The alternative market also aims to assist large firms looking to reconstruct or to finance new projects. Other recent signs of this strategy’s ongoing materialization include the promulgation of a law on financial security, the creation of a Mutual Fund for Investment and Risk (Fonds Commun de Placement à Risques à Compartiments — FCPR) and the development of institutional savings. The Tunisian government wants financial markets to pass from a 7% financing of the Tunisian economy (2006) to a 20% financing by 2009. Authorities, aware of the hard-to-meet conditions of listing on the Tunis Stock Exchange, decided to create an alternative market side by side with the principal market and the bond market. Inaugurated in 2005, the alternative
