Bursa Malaysia previously known as Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (KLSE, Bursa Saham Kuala Lumpur in Malay) dates back to 1930 when the Singapore Stockbrokers' Association was set up as a formal organization dealing in securities in Malaya. The first formal securities business organization in Malaysia was the Singapore Stockbrokers' Association, established in 1930. It was re-registered as the Malayan Stockbrokers' Association in 1937. The Malayan Stock Exchange was established in 1960 and the public trading of shares commenced. The board system had trading rooms in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, linked by direct telephone lines.
In 1964, the Stock Exchange of Malaysia was established. With the secession of Singapore from Malaysia in 1965, the Stock Exchange of Malaysia became known as the Stock Exchange of Malaysia and Singapore. In 1973, currency interchangeability between Malaysia and Singapore ceased, and the Stock Exchange of Malaysia and Singapore was divided into the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange Berhad and the Stock Exchange of Singapore. The Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange which was incorporated on December 14, 1976 as a company limited by guarantee, took over the operations of the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange Berhad in the same year.
In 1998, as one of the attempts to weather the 1997 Asian financial crisis, it fully suspended the trading of CLOB (Central Limit Order Book) counters, indefinitely freezing approximately US$4.47 billion worth of shares and affecting 172,000 investors, most of them Singaporeans. On April 14, 2004, Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange was renamed Bursa Malaysia Berhad, following the demutualization exercise, the purpose of which was to enhance competitive position and to respond to global trends in the exchange sector by making themselves more customer-driven and market-oriented. It consisted of a Main Board, a Second Board and MESDAQ with total market capitalisation of MYR700 billion (US$189 billion).
Bursa Malaysia has since then