SPSE International Women’s Day Event Showcased On NASDAQ Tower

As part of a global initiative and to honour and commemorate the 2019 International Women’s Day, the South Pacific Stock Exchange (SPSE or Exchange) and Nasdaq collaborated to publish a celebratory message on the Nasdaq Market Site Tower based in Times Square, New York City, USA.

This was after SPSE celebrated the event by ringing its opening trading bell followed by a panel discussion on the topic “Challenges and Opportunities for Women in Leadership roles in Fiji and the Pacific”.

The panel discussion was led by Minister for Industry, Trade and Tourism, Premila Kumar and other members of the panel were; Seema Shandil, CEO for Consumer Council of Fiji, Kalpana Lal, Head of Finance for GIZ, Sarah Jane Wild, Head of Pacific Operations for Tower Insurance Limited and was moderated by Nur Bano Ali, Chairperson of SPSE.

Developing SPSE

Commenting on this momentous recognition, SPSE chief executive officer, Krishika Narayan said: “This is a great achievement for a developing stock exchange such as ours which is nestled in this part of the World and thus is often not recognised amongst the bigger players such as the Australian Securities Exchange and New Zealand Stock Exchange present within the Pacific.

“With SPSE and Fiji being announced as the host sponsor for the 2020 World Exchange Congress, this acknowledgment truly enhances SPSE’s vision to be internationally recognised.

“It will maintain international reputation as the preferred securities exchange in the South Pacific.”

Ms Narayan added: “Women representation and participation at decision making level is equally important and many accept- ed historical assumptions contributing to gender disparity must be questioned.

“These thoughts certainly require intervention so that, amongst continuing day to day operations, focus from businesses can also be placed on promoting gender equality.

“It is exhausting to note that women representation on SPSE listed company boards stands at 16.96 per cent only (i.e. 19 out of a total of 112 directors are females) which should ring an alarm amongst our business leaders that current actions taken by them to promote gender parity is not sufficient”.

Ms Narayan concluded by sharing some statistics from the SPSE perspective as an institution steered majorly by women which in itself presents a business case for its listed companies.

She added that “SPSE as an institution is extremely proud of its achievements and has maintained a progressive approach un- der the agenda of gender equality as 78 per cent of its current employees are females.

She added that the exchange currently has and in the past has had female CEOs and that the current SPSE board comprises of 50 per cent women which is led by the only female chairperson in Fiji’s private sector, Dr Nur Bano Ali.

The official ringing of the stock market’s trading bell was jointly done on March 8 by the Mrs Kumar and the High Commissioner of New Zealand, Jonathan Curr to mark the opening of the SPSE’s market trading session.