20th December 2013

Channel Islands Securities Exchange founded

Finance and tourism have long been Guernsey’s two largest industries, so it’s barely any surprise that Guernsey set up its own stock exchange on 20 December 2013.

Officially called The Channel Islands Securities Exchange Authority Limited, but operating as The International Stock Exchange Authority, it is headquartered in St Peter Port and has offices in Jersey and the Isle of Man. It lists companies based in Guernsey, Jersey and jurisdictions beyond the Channel Islands.

The Exchange came about when the Royal Court of Guernsey authorised the rebranding and relaunch of the Channel Islands Stock Exchange, which had been founded in March 1998 and opened seven months later. It had been closed to new members in October 2013 after historical “defects” were discovered in its structure, by which time it had more than 5000 companies on its list.

It re-opened to new members a few days later, and in December the BBC reported that “[t]he Guernsey Financial Services Commission, which was investigating [the stock exchange], would not release details of the problems, but it did confirm they were historical and did not relate to its current work.”

When it relaunched as the Channel Islands Securities Exchange, it had split apart the two halves of its business so that they could operate without any potential conflicts of interest.

Within its first five years, the Securities Exchange had attracted listings of more than 2,000 securities with a market capitalisation in excess of £300bn. One of the securities that it listed was itself.