PanCaribbean Wins Governor General Awards for Excellence
With a capacity crowd in attendance at the Jamaica Stock Exchange’s 7th Best Practices Awards, which was held at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel on Wednesday, December 7, 2011, the night belonged to PanCaribbean Financial Services who copped five of the eleven awards which were up for grabs.
The event was fully supported by Corporate Jamaica. This prestigious gathering included the Governor General of Jamaica, His Excellency, the Most Honourable Patrick Allen- the patron of the event, The Most Honourable Eward Seaga and Mrs. Seaga and the Honourable Marigold Harding, Custos Roteleoum of St. Andrew. The night got underway with Mrs. Street Forrest, General Manager of the Jamaica Stock Exchange welcoming the guests. Mrs. Street Forrest lauded the efforts of the various companies’ employees, who she saw as the main drivers of these companies. According to her “employees who do more than turn up to work, but who are on time, hard-working, productive and accurate in executing their duties ought to be praised. The creativity of these individuals goes into the Websites and the Annual Reports. Let’s laud the strategies employed by the team behind the Best Performing Company; the Customer Focused Approach of those who are considered for the Best Practices Investor Relations and Disclosure. Let us applaud the work and worth of the employees who stand behind the best practices, implemented by tonight’s winners.”
It was then the turn of the Chairman of the Stock Exchange, Mr. Donovan Perkins to address the audience. Mr. Perkins was quite excited about the performance of the Junior Market. He informed the audience that since the inception of the Junior Market in April of 2009, the Junior Market companies have raised over $1.9 billion and Market Capitalization on the Junior Market is a whopping $23.8 billion. He went on to share with the audience that the market has been quite active, with average daily volume for 2011 being 1.3 million units and the average daily value at some $5.1 million per day.
The Guest Speaker for the 7th Best Practices Awards was Mr. Joseph M. Matalon; President of the Private Sector Organization (PSOJ), gave the audience a sneak peek into a research done by a Canadian international development agency-sponsored study in 2007 by WROC, which revealed that while Jamaican women have made significant strides in educational and professional development, their participation on Boards had only moved by 2 %. It was notably worse on private sector boards over the 10 year period, 1998-2007, than the data for public sector boards where women’s participation moved by 4% over the same period. According to Mr. Matalon “these, as far as I am concerned, are shocking statistics”.
He went on to state that, “proponents of the argument for gender diversity on boards and indeed on quotas as a means of accelerating women’s participation in the governance process often cite a number of competences that women bring to board deliberations and make the claim that companies having more women on their boards perform better than male dominated boards. I come with concrete proposals for us in this room to begin to redress this imbalance. My first proposal is to the board of the Jamaica Stock Exchange; I propose that you adopt, as has been adopted by the Australian Stock Exchange, a rule that would require companies to disclose in their annual reports:
· The company’s measurable and time bound objectives for increasing the number of women on their boards, and;
· The progress made each year towards achieving this objective”.
The rest of the evening was left to the Chairman of the Best Practices Committee Chairman, Professor Neville Ying to announce the winners and bring the evening to climax. It was PanCaribbean’s night to shine as they took away two awards in the newly created category of the Member Dealers Awards. They were winners in the Revenue Generation & Market Activity, while 1st Runner up was NCB Capital Markets and 2nd Runner up was Mayberry Investments. They were also the winner in the Investor Relations category, with 1st Runner up being JMMB Securities Ltd and with 2nd Runner up – Stocks & Securities Ltd. However, Mayberry Investments Limited copped the top spot in Expansion of Investors & Listed Companies Base, with 1st Runner up – Barita Investments Ltd and 2nd Runner up – JMMB Securities Ltd. To complete this category of awards, First Global took the top award for the Best Website, while 1st Runner up went to Stocks & Securities Ltd and 2nd Runner up – Capital & Credit Securities Ltd. and Mayberry Investments Limited declared the overall winner for the Member Dealers Awards.
Professor Ying went on to announce the winners of the Best Practices Awards for Listed Companies. Here PanCaribbean took two of the awards along with the Governor General Awards for Excellence. They won in the area of
Best Annual Report, with 1st Runner up – JMMB and 2nd Runner up – Sagicor. They also took away the top award in Corporate Disclosure and Investor Relations; Grace Kennedy was the 1st Runner up and 2nd Runner up – NCBJ.
The other companies were not to be out done. Carreras won the Best Performing category, with First Jamaica and Salada being the 1st and 2nd runner up, respectively. In the area of Best Website for Listed Companies, Guardian Holdings took the top spot, while Capital & Credit Financial Group and Scotia Group Jamaica was 1st and 2nd runner up. National Commercial Bank took away the PSOJ’s Corporate Governance Trophy, while Scotia Investments and Sagicor were the 1st and 2nd place winners. The even climaxed with the Governor General of Jamaica the Most Honourable Sir Patrick Allen, Present the Governor General Award for Excellence to PanCaribbean for being the overall winner of the Jamaica Stock Exchange Best Practices Awards.
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CONTACT:
NEVILLE ELLIS
JAMAICA STOCK EXCHANGE
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