Pioneering investment brokerage Barita Investments marked 40 years of service to the industry and the nation in appropriate fashion with an official bell-ringing ceremony at the Jamaica Stock Exchange in downtown Kingston.
The occasion, which saw a gathering of team members from both the form and the JSE as well as other well-wishers and the media, was also an occasion to pay tribute to the company's visionary founder and Chair, Rita Humphries-Lewin, who founded the company in the midst of socio-economic turmoil in 1977, after a stint with a Canada-based firm, which made her the first female stock trader in this hemisphere and the first woman to head a brokerage firm respectively.
Leading the tribute, Managing Director of the JSE, Marlene Street Forrest said the institution - which her deputy general manager Robin Levy dubbed "the House That Rita Built" - and the investment firm were linked in many important ways. "Barita has played a pivotal role, not only in our industry, but in the building of the economy as a whole, and in paying tribute to them fore 40 years, we fittingly recognize a strong Jamaican woman."
In addition to being the first brokerage firm to acquire a Seat on the Exchange, Barita is the only member-dealer to have chaired the Exchange on three separate occasions - twice through Mrs. Humphries-Lewin and currently in the person of Ian McNaughton, who has held the position since 2016. Under the tenure of Humphries-Lewin, the Exchange not only moved from being domiciled in the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) to its present headquarters, it launched its website in 1997, the Jamaica Central Securities Depository (reducing clearance time for verifying stock trades) in the following year, and a fully automated platform in 2000 its old
For her part Lewin, in accepting the honour, paid tribute to the Board and mangement of the Stock Exchange which she said had doen a great deal for her personally as well as for the firm. "Coming out of high school, " she recalls "I was really at a loss as to what to do with my life....and it was only after landing the opportunity with (Canadian brokerage) Annette and Company that I really found my rhythm."
And its a rhythm that has remained in tune for over 40 years and counting, and Humphries-Lewin is showing no signs of easing up, even with the company in a transitional period. 'I am not the kind of person who does well with nothing to do" Humphries-Lewin said in closing. The final bell is , clearly still some ways away on a already illustrious career.
Barita Investments serves over 20,000 individual and corporate clients , providing equities and fixed income trading, unit trust funds, forex trading, asset management and investment research among many others. The company presently has over J$30 billion of funds under management, and a team of over 80 professionals.
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