T&T’s Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion (UTC) yes­ter­day host­ed its first, share sale in the UTC Glob­al Bal­anced Fund Ltd (GBFL) to in­vestors at an event in St Lu­cia.

Po­ten­tial in­vestors, in­sti­tu­tion­al as well as in­di­vid­ual, gath­ered at the Har­bor Club St Lu­cia, Cu­rio Col­lec­tion by Hilton, to learn more about the GBFL, which is the first re­tail Col­lec­tive In­vest­ment Scheme (CIS) that will be­come avail­able to in­vestors across the en­tire East­ern Caribbean.

In­vestors had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to sign up for the Fund at the event. The GBFL, which com­pris­es re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al stocks and bonds, is be­ing sold in US dol­lars to in­vestors in the East­ern Caribbean.

The share price of the Fund is cal­cu­lat­ed on a dai­ly ba­sis, based on the val­ue of the se­cu­ri­ties in it. Shares in the GBFL are pur­chased at the of­fer price and re­deemed at the bid price. The pur­chase of shares in the Fund at­tracts an ini­tial sales charge of 1.2 per cent, the UTC said in a news re­lease yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing at the pan­el dis­cus­sion in St Lu­cia, Nigel Ed­wards, UTC ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor and GBFL di­rec­tor, re­marked that the Fund will al­low every­one an op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in the cap­i­tal mar­kets in the East­ern Caribbean in a way not pos­si­ble be­fore, much like what UTC of­fered when it start­ed op­er­a­tions in T&T more than 40 years ago.

In her wel­come re­marks, UTC chair Jo-Ann Julien, not­ed that the Cor­po­ra­tion will be cel­e­brat­ing its 41st an­niver­sary to­mor­row. She said the new fund would be the start of a new era of in­vest­ing in the East­ern Caribbean, sim­i­lar to what in­vestors ex­pe­ri­enced in T&T when UTC opened its doors in 1982.

“A gen­er­a­tion has grown up know­ing of the UTC, know­ing they have in their grasp the po­ten­tial to be­come in­vestors, to cre­ate wealth not just for them­selves, but for their fam­i­lies. To leave a lega­cy for them to build on. And that’s the pow­er that we want to share with the peo­ple of St Lu­cia and the wider East­ern Caribbean, the pow­er to change lives for gen­er­a­tions to come, the pow­er that to­geth­er we can make a dif­fer­ence.”

Re­gion­al CIS man­ag­er, GBFL, Omar Burch-Smith, was op­ti­mistic about the pos­si­bil­i­ties that lie ahead, stat­ing, “We are re­al­ly ex­cit­ed to go through the en­tire OECS, de­liv­er­ing that mes­sage of what’s pos­si­ble and what op­por­tu­ni­ties ex­ist through the GBFL,” he said. He said the Fund was ide­al for first-time in­vestors who want­ed to get their feet wet.

Ed­wards echoed these sen­ti­ments, ob­serv­ing that the UTC’s in­ten­tion was to de­vel­op the East­ern Caribbean mar­ket and ul­ti­mate­ly to pro­mote wealth cre­ation for the cit­i­zens of St Lu­cia and, by ex­ten­sion, eco­nom­ic growth. “When you do mo­bilise peo­ple’s cap­i­tal, when you get peo­ple to in­vest in ad­di­tion to sav­ing, that’s very de­vel­op­men­tal for the econ­o­my as well.”

Crys­tal Rod­griguez-Greaves, UTC’s chief risk of­fi­cer, said in the midst of volatil­i­ty, in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties ex­ist, adding: “Be­cause of its com­po­si­tion of in­vest­ments in both eq­ui­ty and fixed in­come in­stru­ments, the GBFL has a medi­um risk pro­file and is con­sid­ered a medi­um-to-long-term in­vest­ment as it aims to pro­vide re­turns though growth of cap­i­tal and in­come gen­er­a­tion,” she said.