Charge of the bulls

Scotiabank Trinidad and Tobago Limited, in addition to announcing a six percent increase last week of its interim dividend on ordinary shares for the first quarter of the financial year, ending March 31, 2005 over that of the corresponding period last year, saw its share value soar on Friday from $32.25 to $35.48, to register an unusually high jump for one day of $3.23 per share! But although Scotiabank recorded an impressive  one-day increase, Republic Bank Limited and Guardian Holdings Limited, for example, along with other companies have consistently registered fairly substantial growth in the value of their shares on the Trinidad and Tobago Stock Exchange.

And while not all of the companies listed on the exchange have enjoyed the same rate of share growth as that of the corporate leaders, nonetheless today’s bullish market has made the purchase of shares in the publicly listed companies, with the notable exception of BWIA, an attractively profitable proposition for investors.  In turn, many of the corporate majors, including holding companies, not merely in Trinidad and Tobago, but in Jamaica and Barbados as well, have subsidiaries and/or associated companies throughout the Caribbean. This means that an investment in one of those corporations is tacitly an investment in the development of the countries in which they operate.

Someone investing in, say, RBTT Financial Holdings has an indirect stake in more than 30 subsidiaries and associated companies, along with those here, in St Lucia, Suriname, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Curacao, St Maarten, Aruba, St Kitts and Nevis and Jamaica.  These have included banks in several of these countries.  RBTT and Republic Bank also play a significant role in assisting, through loans, with public and private sector projects throughout the region. On the other side of the coin, a Jamaican registered company listed on the Trinidad and Tobago Stock Exchange, Grace, Kennedy and Company Limited, has investments in this country and of course Jamaica, as well as in Barbados, Bermuda, St Lucia, Guyana, Belize and Turks and Caicos Islands as well as in the UK, US  and Canada. 

All of this contributes, in turn, to Trinidad and Tobago shareholder profits. Gone are the days, when a Trinidadian or Tobagonian investing his savings in a local company would have to depend solely on how well the company performed on the domestic front to determine the level of his returns. In addition, he does not have to limit his investments today in TT corporations, although their interest in other areas of the region have strengthened the value of his shareholding and in Caribbean companies  cross listed on the TT Stock Exchange. Although the shareholding community in Trinidad and Tobago is relatively substantial, there is always the need for additional domestic investors to look at the pros and cons of listing on the stock market.