The success of the Sygnus Credit Investments (SCI) Ltd’s initial public offer (IPO) in June 2018 is not surprising to those who knew that Jason Morris and his team were the architects of the 2010 Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) intervention in the Jamaican financial sector to prevent a meltdown due to on the credit crisis in the United States which started in 2008.

And so, with a proven history of rigourous research and a timely redundancy from another financial institution, Morris was able to capitalise on a long-held dream to offer a different way for medium-sized companies to finance their expansion plans.

The idea of SCI is to offer business people innovative ways to finance expansion in ways that commercial banks may not consider.

With an offer of $1.2 billion to the public and the public response of three times that for the IPO, it is clear that the market is confident that the team of Morris and Berisford Grey will deliver returns in excess of what can be gained from savings rates.

That said, Morris, chief investment officer at Sygnus, sat down with us to discuss his career history.

“I left The University of the West Indies in the year 2000 after graduation and then worked at the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) with Charles Ross (head of Sterling Asset Management) as my boss and I learned at lot from him. His leadership was backed by detailed economic data that really opened my eyes to how the economy functioned. After PSOJ, I was briefly at the National Water Commission (NWC) as an economist in 2001 for 9 months.”

It was not until Morris went to Jamaica Money Market Brokers (JMMB) that he began to carve the path that would build his name as having an eye for financial details and as a strategist that creates innovative solutions.

“Because of work at PSOJ, I knew a lot about the Jamaican economy and that led to the opportunity to be one of the founding members of the JMMB research department. I was there for seven and half years and I can say that JMMB is where I learned pretty much what I know about financial markets. I created the first private sector analysis of the Jamacian economy which covered the macroeconomy, the budget, a forecast and such. From there, I was promoted to portfolio manager, and then the 2008 crisis hit. And so I did a lot of background work to help frame the discussion for a US$270-million line of credit to the entire financial sector by the BOJ to help prevent the crash of the local financial sector. As a result of the Lehman Brothers and other banking crises in the United States, the overseas credit lines to our sector were cut. Adrian Stokes and I wrote the paper that guided the BOJ in creating the framework for this line of credit to help bouy the banks from going under.”

From JMMB, Morris then moved on to Scotiabank.

“In 2010, an opportunity came up and I left JMMB to expand my horizons. I went to Scotia Investments on the invitation of Anya Schnoor, then head of that investment institution. I went there for product development structure. While there I created a money market fund with safety of principal and dividend payout, which was a first in Jamaica. I got promoted in 2.5 years to vice-president of business analytics and portfolio advsiory. I was head of corporate strategy and created a corporate retreat which allowed Scotia executives to use economic data to plot out strategy for the coming year. Further, my duties also expanded to the point where I was head of a research team which provided analytics and data to Scotia Caribbean branches.”

While managing his duties at his corporate day job, Morris and his team were slowly piecing together what would eventually become Sygnus.

“In 2006, Ike Johnson (now chief operating officer at Sygnus Capital) and I started Syngus International Ltd, a St Lucia international business corporation, as based on our reputation in the financial sector, people would came to us with business ideas for us to fund, particularly real estate — for example, they have land and no money to build.”

However, the first emergence of Sygnus was shuttered in 2008 when the financial sector crisis hit.

As fate would have it, a casual drink with a friend reignited the idea of Sygnus.

“In 2013, Ike and Berisford Grey (now chief executive officer Sygnus Capital) and I were at CRU Bar, and we exchanged ideas and realised that we had similar ideas. We realised we needed to come together and from that Sunday — and every Sunday after that — we worked on business for three years. In June 2016 we were ready.”

Interestingly, that same month Morris’s position was made redundant from Scotia. And he wasn’t too bothered, as he stated, “that was right in time to get the money to keep me personally afloat while we started the firm”.

From there, the team of Morris, Grey and Johnson hit the road to seek investors.

“We had to seek capital and the idea was to get four investors to give us US$500,000 each. However, when we presented to Gassan Azan he came on board and provided the support we needed. Next, we went to set up our board of directors. The former head of the Jamaica Stock Exchange, Wayne Iton, said ‘yes’ and all the other directors fell in place.”

And the rest was history. The 2018 initial public offer was over subscribed three times and Morris and his team now have the satisfaction that their dream from 2008, that took 10 years to come true, is real — and the investing market loves it.