GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

The T&T Stock Ex­change Ltd (TTSE) has an­nounced the amend­ment of Rule 400(2)(g) in re­spect of the spe­cial mar­ket list­ing re­quire­ment for the small and medi­um en­ter­prise (SME) mar­ket ef­fec­tive Au­gust 22, 2024 which aims to pro­mot­ing growth.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, the TTSE ex­plained that the lev­el of pub­lic float re­quired for SMEs is now re­duced to 20 per cent of the to­tal is­sued share cap­i­tal, down from the pre­vi­ous re­quire­ment of 30 per cent.

It added this change was in­tend­ed to en­cour­age com­pa­nies to utilise the TTSE SME mar­ket to raise cap­i­tal while main­tain­ing com­pli­ance with nec­es­sary reg­u­la­to­ry stan­dards.

The TTSE fur­ther not­ed that the amend­ment re­flect­ed its on­go­ing com­mit­ment to fos­ter­ing growth and cre­at­ing a more ac­ces­si­ble en­vi­ron­ment for SMEs seek­ing to list on the ex­change.

This amend­ment, the TTSE fur­ther not­ed, was care­ful­ly con­sid­ered to bal­ance reg­u­la­to­ry com­pli­ance and mar­ket ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty, mak­ing it eas­i­er for SMEs to meet list­ing re­quire­ments while still en­sur­ing in­vestor con­fi­dence and mar­ket sta­bil­i­ty.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion added that it con­tin­ues to sup­port the growth and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of its lo­cal cap­i­tal mar­kets and re­mains com­mit­ted to cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for busi­ness­es of all sizes to ac­cess pub­lic fund­ing.

This is not the first amend­ment to the rules the TTSE has made re­cent­ly.

In Jan­u­ary this year, it an­nounced amend­ments to the TTSE Rules, which led to the short­en­ing of the set­tle­ment pe­ri­od for lo­cal stocks and mu­tu­al funds from three days to two days, in line with glob­al best prac­tices.

The im­ple­men­ta­tion of this short­er set­tle­ment pe­ri­od is dubbed T+2.

This shift to T+2 meant in­vestors can ac­cess their se­cu­ri­ties and funds quick­er.

In ac­cor­dance with Sec­tion 40(4) of the Se­cu­ri­ties Act Chap 83:02, the TTSEC is­sued an or­der dat­ed De­cem­ber 18, 2023, ap­prov­ing the amend­ments to the fol­low­ing rules:

a. TTSE Rule - 212 deal­ing and ac­count pe­ri­ods

b. TTSE Rule - 203 ex-con­di­tion deal­ing

The ti­tles of the rules have been re­vised to:

a. TTSE Rule - 212 trad­ing and set­tle­ment pe­ri­od

b. TTSE Rule - 203 ex-con­di­tion trad­ing