Sep 2009 Financial News

Caribbean Exchange Network to be implemented by year-end

Sep 25, 2009

THE Caribbean Exchange Network (CXN) - a co-ordinated electronic trading platform between the stock exchanges of Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago and Barbados - is expected to be fully implemented and functional by the end of 2009, Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE) general manager Marlene Street-Forrest told Caribbean Business Report.

"The constitutive documents, in order to have the network going, have been reviewed by all our regulators: the Financial Services Commission, the Trinidad & Tobago Securities and Exchange Commission and the Barbados Securities Commission," she said. "We expect that we will be getting full approval any time now."

Street-Forrest said the integration of the region's top three exchanges is aimed at increasing trading volume and liquidity and attracting external investors like large pension funds from the US and around the world. "They are concerned with the ability to enter and exit effectively.

In coming together we can offer to the global market a larger exchange," said the GM, noting the integrated exchanges will offer investors a single platform to access around 100 listed companies as opposed to around 40 JSE-listed companies Jamaican investors have direct access to today.

"At this moment, a broker in Jamaica wanting shares on the other exchanges not cross-listed would have to call a broker in the other market to do a transaction," she noted.


Source:
Oliver Hill Business Editor
Jamaica Observer
Friday, September 25, 2009

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/magazines/Business/html/20090924T200000-0500_160386_OBS_CARIBBEAN_EXCHANGE_NETWORK_TO_BE_IMPLEMENTED_BY_YEAR_END.asp