FOR IMMEDIATE PUBLICATION – Friday 8 January 2016
The Bahamas International Securities Exchange (BISX) announced today that the Government of The Commonwealth of The Bahamas has successfully completed the listing process for all of the Notes that comprise Tranche 3 of Bahamas Government Stock (“the Notes”). As a result, the Notes have been added to the roster of securities listed on the Exchange and each Note will trade separately and independently on the Exchange under its own symbol through the BISX Automated Trading System (BATS).
Bahamas Government Stock (BGS) are securities issued by the Government of The Commonwealth of The Bahamas that can be immediately listed and traded over BISX. The BGS Programme began in December 2014 and the Notes just listed become the third tranche to be offered and then listed on the Exchange. The offering period for Tranche 3 was in June 2015
Speaking about this new listing; Keith Davies, the BISX Chief Executive noted: “We are happy to add an additional tranche of BGS to the two existing tranches listed on BISX. The real time pricing and trading of BGS in a regulated and free market is an essential step in the growth of The Bahamian capital markets. Government debt the world over is the security used for establishing the benchmark risk pricing against which all other securities in a capital market are judged and so we are happy to add more government securities that contribute to the evolution of our market.”
Mr. Holland Grant, BISX Chief Operating Officer explained the naming convention used by BISX to differentiate the symbols of the various notes. “Our purpose in the symbol naming convention was to create a simple and unambiguous means that can be used repeatedly for different notes and tranches.”
Mr. Grant went on to say: “Each security listed on BISX is given a unique symbol for ease of identification. For BGS each security is identified by a 6 character symbol intended to uniquely identify that security, for example, a BGS Note with the symbol BG0307 could be broken down to identify the following:
• The first two characters will be the same for all BGS, namely “BG”;
• The second two characters will reflect the tranche that these particular bonds were issued under, the tranche number is displayed on page one of the Offering Memorandum for each tranche. Tranche 3, was issued in June 2015 and included 3 year bonds, 5 year bonds, 7 year bonds and 30 year bonds, all bonds issued under that Tranche would have “03” as their second two characters.
• The last two characters would reflect the term of the individual bonds, so the seven year bond would have “07” as the last two characters. Accordingly, the seven year bond issued under Tranche 3, would be represented by the following symbol: “BG0307”.
Tranche 3 was issued in June 2015 and consists of 4 Notes of various maturities.
NOTE: Attached to this message is the BISX Trading Notice for the Notes of BGS Tranche 3. This notice advises the public of the securities to be listed on the Exchange and the symbol of the listed securities.
For Additional Information Contact:
Elude Michel-Sturrup
Tel: 242-323-2330Trading Notice – BGS notes Tranche 3
Fax: 242-323-2320
Email: info@bisxbahamas.com
