JSE’s Investment Confab to be Calendar Event
(KINGSTON, JANUARY 27, 2007)The Jamaica Stock Exchange has announced that its regional conference on Investments and Capital Markets will again be held in 2008 for the third consecutive year.
Making the disclosure, JSE General Manager Marlene Street Forrest said the success of the first two years has made the conference a calendar event.
Mrs. Street Forrest recalled that in 2006, almost immediately after the inaugural conference, participants were asking: “When are you going to have 2007?” Persons said they learnt so much from it and had implemented many things that came out of that conference.
“We know it is something that will help not only Jamaica but the region,” she said, adding, “If it is going to help our economy we are going to have it because we are committed to educating our Jamaican people, in terms of advancing the Capital Markets. It has broadened the concept of ‘thinking locally but acting globally’,” she noted.
Having determined from the outset that the conference would not be just a talk shop, Mrs. Street Forrest said the JSE expected that issues would be raised and challenges addressed. “We did our best to ensure that that happened, so, for example, in terms of the regional alliance when we spoke last year it was still a concept but we moved forward with it and we can stand proudly to say that barring regulatory hiccough we are ready to go by the beginning of the second quarter of this year.”
Reacting to a call at conference 2007 for action on developing the regional market, Mrs. Street Forrest said with the regional alliance now being developed, “this conference has given us the added push to ensure that it happens.”
Also, in respect to issues that arose from the conference, “we are going back with a checklist and our board will be moving towards some of these things. Something that came out of the conference that we have been working on is the need for education. We have heard that there is a model in Brazil that works and we are going to see how we can utilize it in building our market.”
She said the conference was “a way to lead us from one year into another and to ensure that our achievements redound to the success and development of the country and others in the region.”
The two-day networking forum which was held at the Ritz Carlton, Montego Bay, had as its theme: “The Global Response: Strategy and Innovation for Regional Capital Markets Growth.”
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It attracted nearly 200 senior business and financial executives from Jamaica and the wider Caribbean.
“I would say it was a very good conference. I think it was a good learning experience and a good opportunity for networking,” said Mr. Laurie Lawrence of the Federal Government of Nevis, in a post-conference review.
For succeeding conferences, Mr. Lawrence ”would like to see for the future that they structure it differently, giving more time for discussion and a lot more opportunity for better presentations in terms of substance.”
Malindo Wallace of Capital Options Ltd. in Kingston found the conference “informative.” I particularly enjoyed the sessions on the Venture Capital Funds; it was very informative; it opened my eyes to the possibilities that we now have and where we need to go and it was basically a good session.”
For the conference overall, Ms. Wallace said her “hope and expectation is that come next year we won’t still be talking about what we need to do to advance Capital Markets in the region and we would have progressed a littler further to try to eke out a framework in terms of what next on the path to getting there.”
She has endorsed calls made at the conference by Opposition Leader Bruce Golding and NCB Capital Markets Managing Director Christopher Williams that “it’s time for action.” She added, “I’m hoping that comes next year we will be a little further along the road trying to figure out how to get to where we want to go.”
Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Barita Investments Ltd., Mrs. Rita Humphries felt that it’s a well needed forum; timing is what is critical because what we want to get at these fora is more participation; we want to get some of the listed companies.
Mrs. Humphries also supports the call for action now on the regional market, noting, “We need to get going; they just need to put it in place and that is very important.”
