The Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE) and the Dutch Caribbean Securities Exchange (DCSX) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding toward building and leveraging synergies to grow the financial markets in both jurisdictions.

Both stock exchanges will be partnering in areas such as digitization, market education, cross-listing and accessing the European markets.

“What we are doing is ensuring that all the exchanges within the Caribbean are linked so that all parties can benefit from the synergies,” JSE Managing Director Dr Marlene Street Forrest said. 

The exchanges will also be able to provide services that they may not have now, she said.

“For example, leveraging our e-campus,” she said.

“We thank the Dutch Caribbean Securities Exchange for making this journey, for it further cements our objective of strengthening the linkages in the Caribbean. We have Trinidad and Tobago; we have Barbados and Eastern Caribbean and now we have the Dutch Caribbean, and this is exciting,” Dr Street Forrest said in the JSE’s media release.

Partnering to develop the financial services industry across the region will further bolster the Caribbean’s ability to attract overseas investors, she reasoned.

“The more we can join with each other in terms of offering of services to the market, the better and more attractive the region becomes to external investors,” she said.

Listed companies may also soon have an avenue to tap European markets.

“What it [the partnership] would mean is that there is the possibility. We will be able to leverage the relationships of the DCSX to enter the European markets and vice versa,” she said of the win-win for market expansion that the MOU allows.

“The JSE is seeking to continue forging this partnership with DCSX as we pursue our 2025 vision to expand our borders for growth and sustainability,” Dr Street Forrest said.

“We are of the firm belief that as we pursue regional partnerships, we are in a better position to innovate, become more relevant to those outside of our immediate communities for foreign direct investments among other programme and seize global opportunities, which we would not have otherwise captured had we not forged a working relationship,” she added.