SYGNUS Credit Investments Limited (SCI) has announced that it will be delisting its Jamaican dollar cross-listed shares and its US dollar cross-listed shares on the Main Market of the Jamaica Stock Exchange.

The company has two classes of shares, a US-dollar share class identified as Sygnus Credit Investments Limited USD (SCIUSD) ordinary shares, and a Jamaican-dollar share class identified as Sygnus Credit Investments Limited JMD (SCIJMD) ordinary shares. The US-dollar share class is cross-listed on the Jamaican-dollar market as Sygnus Credit Investments Limited JMD (SCIUSD) ordinary shares, while the Jamaican-dollar share class is cross-listed on the US-dollar market as Sygnus Credit Investments Limited USD (SCIJMD) ordinary shares. The delisting will only affect the two cross-listings, that is Sygnus Credit Investments Limited JMD (SCIUSD) ordinary shares and Sygnus Credit Investments Limited USD (SCIJMD) ordinary shares. The US-dollar ordinary share class and the Jamaican-dollar ordinary share class will not be affected.

“SCI has taken the decision to delist the cross-listed shares, primarily because the original purpose of the cross-listing is not being fulfilled. We had created two classes of shares: a Jamaican-dollar class to satisfy a large institutional investor base which could only invest in local currency, and a US-dollar class to satisfy retail investors whose habitat was foreign currency. Our initial intent with cross-listing was to provide shareholders with an opportunity to freely move between US-dollar and Jamaican-dollar investment habitats, depending on their particular needs, which would enhance price discovery and increase liquidity. In other words, shareholders would have the flexibility to conduct trades in one currency and settle in another, as well as to choose the market in which they wish to participate at any given time.

However, this has not materialised, perhaps due to the fact that despite the USD share class being cross-listed on the Jamaican dollar market, the investors from the USD share class are not able to interact directly with the investors of the JMD share class, and vice-versa. In other words, one cannot exchange their JMD shares for USD shares directly. After evaluating the low volume of transactions for the cross-listed shares, and the fees associated with cross-listing, we felt it prudent to delist them,” executive vice-president and chief investment officer at Sygnus Group, Jason Morris shared.