Jamaica to Host Regional Securities Meeting Next Month

Stakeholders in the securities industry throughout the region will meet in Kingston from November 7 to 8 for the second annual Caribbean Securities Regulators Conference.
The conference, which will be held at the Jamaica Conference Centre, will discuss the interrelated themes of investor protection and market development in the region and explore the implications for the development of a regulatory strategy and policy in the Caribbean.
Executive Director of the Financial Services Commission (FSC), Brian Wynter, while addressing the launch of the event at the Hilton Kingston Hotel in New Kingston on October 11, pointed out that securities market development in the Caribbean had to take place in a context where economies were undergoing continuous structural and institutional change. According to the FSC Executive Director, “domestic markets are buffeted by the effects of the emergence of an increasingly borderless, integrated business and financial world.”
“This wave of change,” he continued, “has influenced, among other things, the deregulation of domestic goods and financial markets and the removal of barriers to cross-border trade and finance”.
Similar to other emerging markets across the globe, Mr. Wynter said regulators of Caribbean securities markets were faced with the challenge of balancing protection and market development against a background where financial markets were becoming increasingly integrated.
As a result of this, he said, there was an increased “need for cross border collaboration in supervisory matters and raises the issues of information sharing among regulators, harmonisation of financial sector legislation and the development of uniform standards for public disclosure and corporate governance within regulated entities in different jurisdictions”.
The two-day conference, which will be held under the theme: ‘Securities Market Regulation: Balancing Protection and Development’, will comprise five technical presentations and seven panel discussions, with four of the five presentations falling under the sub-theme of ‘Investor Protection’.
The topics, he informed, would include: Prosecuting Securities Market Abuse: Practices and Pitfalls; Corporate Governance Standards for Issuers and Dealers; and The Implications of the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) for Securities Market Regulators. He said the conference was expected to feature approximately 32 presenters, which were drawn from a cross section of entities in the financial sector. They include representatives from Caribbean securities regulatory agencies; self-regulatory agencies such as stock exchanges; and international standard setting bodies such as the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO).