BuntingRoxanne Stapleton, Contributor
ASSETS UNDER its management have crossed J$30 billion and now this extensive financial service provider has stamped its footprint on local soil when it launched its physical presence last week at the penthouse suite at the PWC Building in upscale Newtown, Port-of-Spain.
This move follows the company's cross-listing on the Trinidad and Tobago Stock Exchange (TTSE), which took place just more than a year ago.
Dehring Bunting and Golding (DB&G), is a leader in the Jamaican capital market and has successfully piloted a J$100 million bond issue for Jamaica's, Government-owned, Micro- Investment Development Agency (MIDA).
DB&G also successfully raised J$100 million for the Jamaica Mortgage Bank, another statutory corporation, through a similar tax-free bond structure.
FEASIBLE FUND-RAISING INSTRUMENT
According to its executives, those ventures were only the beginning for the company, since it has continued to confirm the viability of the use of bonds as a feasible fund-raising instrument in Jamaica.
In October 2001, the Jamaica Government again raised US$100 million following the attacks on September 11, by way of bonds placed through DB&G.
Its executive chairman, Peter Bunting, corporate secretary, Mark Golding, COO and president, Garfield Sinclair and Trinidadian country manager, Lisa Maria Alexander, last week delved into specifics of charting growth and the way forward for the Jamaica-based financial powerhouse and its physical entry into the Trinidad and Tobago market.
Alexander opened: "The mutual fund market itself is quite competitive. However, because we see that our product is easily superior - the numbers say that it is - I expect that over the next 15 months, we're going to make a significant dent in the mutual fund market, which right now (in T&T) is about $27 billion."
Sinclair interjected: "Talking about our product, even when adjusted by the valuation, its currently yielding 10 to 10.5 per cent, which is twice the average yield on analogous Trinidadian mutual fund products, so when Lisa talks about superiority, we're really talking about a significant difference in yield.
"The average Trinidadian investor is sophisticated when it comes to analysing mutual fund products because they've been dealing with them for so long."
COMPARISONS
DB&G's executive chairman, Peter Bunting, further analysed: "And those comparisons are relevant to the current year, but even when we date five-year comparisons going back to 2000, again adjusting for the valuation, the Money Market Fund and the Premium Growth Fund still significantly outperformed all of the regional peer groups that we looked at in Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados."
Alexander also interjected: "We're not limited to mutual fund products. We have access to the suite of products that are available at our investment bank. Everyone talks about the adage of being a one-stop-shop, but we actually have the capacity, the capability and the wherewithal to do that. We have brokerage, asset management and so on."
Asked about its stock price and performance on the TTSE since listing here last year, both Sinclair and Bunting gave their takes.
Sinclair said: "Since we've been listed here, our price has bounced around and volumes traded have been quite significant adding to its liquidity."
Taking up from this point, Bunting continued: "What we're seeing this year is something of a correction for what was an extremely bullish year last year (2004).
"Our stock price last year moved up somewhere in the region of 100 per cent and the adjustment this year has been somewhere around 10 per cent. So, although there's been an adjustment, if you look over a period of time, that correction is coming after a very aggressive run-up in our price.
"In fact, if you go back over a five-year period, which is really what I think long-term investors should concern themselves with more the longer term than the shorter term performance, our stock price has moved something like 3,000 per cent over that period of time, so it has given a very, very attractive return."
COMPETITIVE RATES
DB&G's company secretary, Mark Golding joined in at this stage, explaining: "Elaborating on the product suite that we intend to offer here, we're able to offer repos in U.S. dollars, Euro and Pound Sterling as well, at attractive rates and will be very competitive in the market here.
"There are some good opportunities currently in Euro-denominated investment, for people who want to hedge against Caribbean currencies. They normally think in terms of U.S. dollars as a way of doing that, but the U.S. dollar's value has been under challenge and as it happens, the Euro presently as against the U.S. dollar is a very attractive exchange rate.
"So we plan to make a niche for ourselves in foreign currency investment products, as well as the mutual funds, unit trust products that we have to offer.
Questioned by Business Express as to the pluses of coming from perhaps the most stringently regulated economy in CARICOM, Jamaica, since its financial laws are the most updated in the region, after that country's economic downturn in the 90s forced change. Golding shed more light: "We are fully accustomed to having to operate within a fairly demanding regulatory framework at DB&G, because we don't only have a securities dealership which is regulated by the Financial Services Commission of Jamaica, with which we're in excellent standing, but also we have a Merchant Bank subsidiary which is a banking operation and is regulated by the Central Bank of Jamaica (BoJ), which is an extremely assertive regulator and has that reputation among your Trinidadian banks which have branches operating in Jamaica.
"We're authorised primary dealers which means that we are commissioned by the Government/BoJ to make a market in Government securities. We're a foreign exchange dealer there and that's another licences which is regulated. So we have a series of licenses which require ongoing compliance."
DB&G's stock price on the TTSE closed at $2.00 last Friday.
Taken from the Trinidad & Tobago Express Published Wednesday, November 16, 2005.
