There will come a time when en­tre­pre­neurs will not be able to ac­cess debt fi­nanc­ing (bank loans) to grow their busi­ness­es and will not have any choice but to con­sid­er list­ing on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change (TTSE).

This is the ar­gu­ment put for­ward by the TTSE CEO, Amoy Van Lowe who in an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian said: “At some point in time, go­ing to the bank for debt is go­ing to come to an end and there­fore if you want fur­ther ex­pan­sion—the ex­change is a vi­able op­tion.”

Van Lowe con­tin­ued that a com­pa­ny’s “debt to eq­ui­ty ra­tio is go­ing to get to a point where they need to find an­oth­er way to grow their busi­ness or oth­er ways to find funds to ex­pand their busi­ness—and I know that the banks will do the right thing by chan­nelling them to an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

Notwith­stand­ing the chal­lenges, Van Lowe de­scribed the coun­try’s cap­i­tal mar­ket as “a po­ten­tial pearl” and said the Bro­kers, En­tre­pre­neurs, Reg­u­la­tors, Min­istry of Fi­nance, List­ed Com­pa­nies, Var­i­ous Cham­bers, As­so­ci­a­tions, Trinidad and To­ba­go In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre “need to work in greater uni­son to re­alise this un­der-tapped re­source.”

From the cor­po­rate per­spec­tive, Van Lowe ad­mit­ted that it has been ar­gued that there is a nar­row pool to se­lect from.

She as­sert­ed that as a con­se­quence, one finds the Cor­po­rate in­vestors, Pen­sions Funds, etc hold­ing on to their per­form­ing shares for their re­spec­tive Port­fo­lios. While the TTSE CEO not­ed that one can­not find fault in that ap­proach, be­cause it is what any savvy in­vestor would do, she said that it does cre­ate a chal­lenge.

Van Lowe ex­plained that from the in­di­vid­ual per­spec­tive, the cul­ture in T&T is one where per­sons are quite risk averse and the coun­try is not. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she adds that T&T does not have a nat­ur­al a trad­ing cul­ture.

Van Lowe as­sert­ed: “Whether they are not in­vest­ing due to a lack of ad­e­quate knowl­edge of in­vest­ing or per­sons pur­chas­ing and hold­ing the shares, there is re­duced ac­tiv­i­ty in our mar­ket to­day, which con­tributes to our mar­ket be­ing, to some de­gree illiq­uid.”

Van Lowe said for this rea­son, the TTSE is work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to­wards mak­ing the whole in­vest­ing mech­a­nism and by ex­ten­sion trad­ing more wide­ly ac­ces­si­ble.

She said that hav­ing the in­fra­struc­ture to sup­port ac­tive trad­ing and ed­u­cat­ing the pub­lic about in­vest­ing are the two com­po­nents need­ed in or­der to cre­ate a mar­ket that is re­spon­sive and dy­nam­ic.

TTSE’s On­line
Trad­ing Plat­form

One of the strate­gic ini­tia­tives that the TTSE will im­ple­ment to in­crease ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties is the es­tab­lish­ment of an on­line trad­ing plat­form, re­ferred to as TOP (TTSE On­line Plat­form).

Van Lowe ar­tic­u­lat­ed that on­line trad­ing is noth­ing new to the wider in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket but for our lo­cal mar­ket it is an­oth­er strate­gic step to em­pow­er­ing in­vestors, stim­u­lat­ing trad­ing and help grow the mar­ket.

The soon-to-be-launched TOP is a project that has been in the pipeline and it is one of the TTSE’s key strate­gic ini­tia­tives.

Van Lowe said TOP will pro­vide a more ef­fi­cient and faster means to trade, with in­vestors hav­ing 24/7 ac­cess to view re­al-time move­ments in their port­fo­lio and the mar­ket.

She said the plat­form will help stim­u­late the mar­ket and pro­vide an av­enue for greater reach in an era where on­line ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty is more ap­peal­ing to all in­vestors, es­pe­cial­ly the younger gen­er­a­tion.

For in­vestors wish­ing to trade on TOP, they must reg­is­ter for a TOP ac­count on­line via the web-based ap­pli­ca­tion, have a Trinidad & To­ba­go Cen­tral De­pos­i­to­ry ac­count (TTCD a/c); and pos­sess an e-mail ad­dress. To ac­cess this ser­vice “you must have a bro­ker.”

She not­ed how­ev­er “if you don’t have a bro­ker there will be list of bro­ker in­for­ma­tion on the site that will guide you ac­cord­ing­ly.”

Once the bro­ker ap­proves your ac­count Van Lowe said you can be­gin to trade.

In an ef­fort to mod­ernise and in­crease in­vestor aware­ness of TTSE, the or­gan­i­sa­tion is al­so gear­ing up to launch its “new brand iden­ti­ty.”

In Jan­u­ary 2020, Van Lowe added that the TTSE launched its eS­tate­ment plat­form which im­proves ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to the in­vestor whilst at the same time do­ing its part in pre­serv­ing our en­vi­ron­ment.”

Re­cent trans­ac­tions
in the Mar­ket

When asked about the re­cent sit­u­a­tion with Bourse Se­cu­ri­ties and the First Cit­i­zens IPO, Van Lowe said that she could not com­ment on the mat­ter.

How­ev­er, she re­as­sured all stake­hold­ers, es­pe­cial­ly the in­vest­ing pub­lic that to­geth­er with the Board and Man­age­ment the TTSE will con­tin­ue to as­sess and eval­u­ate ar­eas of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and im­ple­ment so­lu­tions aimed at pro­vid­ing a fair and or­der­ly mar­ket for the ben­e­fit of all our in­vestors.

When asked if the re­cent pub­li­ca­tions on the mat­ter would have cast sus­pi­cion on the bro­ker­age com­mu­ni­ty, Van Lowe said: “I think we can all see that there has been sev­er­al bit of re­ports on it and like any oth­er hu­man you are go­ing to ques­tion.”

She con­tin­ued: “I al­so be­lieve that the SEC over the last few days has been do­ing its en­deav­our best to put out in­for­ma­tion in­to the pub­lic do­main that seeks to clar­i­fy how they go about their process—so any in­di­vid­ual can read and un­der­stand the process that was tak­en be­cause it was a pain stak­ing step by step process.”

Van Lowe said how­ev­er, that she does not be­lieve it cast a long shad­ow on the com­mu­ni­ty.

She said: “It’s a six year mat­ter sev­er­al things have been put in place, both at the SEC and at the Stock Ex­change just to en­sure that we don’t have any re­peat or re­cur­rence of any sit­u­a­tion and I can as­sure you that the board and my­self con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor our rules, our reg­u­la­tions and our re­quire­ments to ad­dress any­thing like that.”

When asked if some­one can be rep­re­sent­ing the board of the Stock Ex­change and a bro­ker­age firm si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, Van Lowe said that “it is en­shrined in our Rules and these Rules form part of the Se­cu­ri­ties Act, that Mem­bers must have rep­re­sen­ta­tion on the Board of the Ex­change.”

How­ev­er, Van Lowe clar­i­fied that “an ac­tive trad­er can­not be a mem­ber of the board.”

She con­tin­ued: “So it’s more than just a mat­ter of al­low­ing Di­rec­tors to work as Bro­kers it is a re­quire­ment that our Mem­ber Bro­ker/Deal­ers are rep­re­sent­ed.”