Chair­man of the T&T Stock Ex­change (TTSE) Pe­ter Clarke is op­ti­mistic about new list­ings in the com­ing year be­cause there has been in­ter­est from po­ten­tial is­suers.

In the TTSE's an­nu­al re­port, which has been re­lease on­line, said there had been no new list­ing on the TTSE's pri­ma­ry mar­ket last year and in­stead there was the delist­ing of BCB Hold­ings Lim­it­ed and FN­CU Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed.

"The high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed IPO re­lat­ed to Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Lim­it­ed (PPGL) was tar­get­ed by the Gov­ern­ment for ear­ly 2015 how­ev­er a con­firmed date is yet to be de­ter­mined," he said.

"The de­cline ob­served in trad­ing vol­ume and val­ue for 2014 may con­tin­ue in­to 2015 un­less there are new eq­ui­ty is­sues, as the lack of in­vest­ment al­ter­na­tives cause in­vestors to hold their po­si­tions."

Clarke said 2014 was a year of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, ex­pan­sion, growth and hu­man cap­i­tal de­vel­op­ment for the TTSE as its core busi­ness ar­eas were aligned and sup­port­ed by in­creased fo­cus hu­man cap­i­tal and on cor­po­rate gov­er­nance. He said com­pli­ance and risk man­age­ment struc­tures have been re­viewed for fur­ther ex­pan­sion, pro­vid­ing the foun­da­tion for the TTSE to "con­tin­ue de­liv­er­ing on its strat­e­gy, lever­ag­ing its range of prod­ucts and ser­vices and fur­ther di­ver­si­fy­ing its of­fer­ing through new prod­uct de­vel­op­ment while en­sur­ing its reg­u­la­to­ry func­tions keep pace with a chang­ing land­scape.

He said rev­enues fell mar­gin­al­ly by 5.58 per cent to $14.07 mil­lion. due to a down­ward trend in stock mar­ket ac­tiv­i­ty which im­pact­ed on sec­ondary mar­ket trad­ing fee in­come.

"On the ex­pense side, our op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es rose by 11.36 per cent, re­flec­tive of the strate­gic ini­tia­tives un­der­tak­en through­out the year; and this com­bined with a re­duced rev­enue po­si­tion, re­sult­ed in a de­cline in prof­it af­ter tax by 38.56 per cent to $2.74 mil­lion," he said.

Clarke said the TTSE's our sub­sidiary com­pa­ny, the T&T Cen­tral De­pos­i­to­ry Lim­it­ed (TTCD) ex­pand­ed its ser­vice of­fer­ing to the fi­nan­cial mar­ket with the launch of its Eu­ro­clear busi­ness line. He said this de­vel­op­ment will "strate­gi­cal­ly ex­pand­ed the TTCD's core cus­tody of­fer­ings from lo­cal and re­gion­al list­ed se­cu­ri­ties to in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ties and USD re­pur­chase agree­ments (re­po)." In ad­di­tion, he said, it pro­vides the TTSE with rev­enue di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, in­creas­ing the sta­bil­i­ty of its rev­enue stream.

He said the TTSE plans to achieve fur­ther sus­tain­able growth by in­creas­ing and di­ver­si­fy­ing its list­ings on all mar­ket tiers.

Clarke added: "This will re­quire us to fur­ther col­lab­o­rate with our key stake­hold­ers and strate­gic part­ners in­clud­ing Gov­ern­ment, mem­ber firms and oth­er in­vest­ment pro­fes­sion­als.

"Leg­is­la­tion and reg­u­la­tion amend­ments to the Se­cu­ri­ties Act 2012 (the Act) were ap­proved by Par­lia­ment in 2014. A re­view of the rules of the Ex­change and of the TTCD was un­der­tak­en for the pur­pose of align­ment with the Act and amend­ed rules will be fi­nalised af­ter re­view and ap­proval by our reg­u­la­tor.

"The Unit­ed States For­eign Ac­count Tax Com­pli­ance Act (Fat­ca) was in­tro­duced by the US Gov­ern­ment with the ob­jec­tive of en­sur­ing that US per­sons with fi­nan­cial as­sets out­side of the US pay the rel­e­vant tax­es on their in­vest­ments and for­eign fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions (FF­Is) are re­quired to de­ter­mine the US tax sta­tus of its ac­count hold­ers.

"The TTCD reg­is­tered as an FFI in 2014. To en­sure that the or­gan­i­sa­tion re­mains Fat­ca com­pli­ant, the TTCD has been im­ple­ment­ing the nec­es­sary sys­tems to al­low for re­ten­tion of the re­quired client in­for­ma­tion in or­der to fa­cil­i­tate re­port­ing.

Clarke said an im­proved fi­nan­cial per­for­mance is an­tic­i­pat­ed this year as the TTSE builds up­on its 2014 strate­gic in­vest­ments.

"We will con­tin­ue to ac­tive­ly pro­mote eq­ui­ty is­suance in the mar­ket. Our di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion strat­e­gy should bring greater sta­bil­i­ty to our top line rev­enues. Chal­lenges in find­ing in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and in­creased reg­u­la­tion will con­tin­ue to be defin­ing fac­tors in our fi­nan­cial mar­kets," he said.