Bahamas International Securities Exchange (BISX): how it works, who runs it, and what issuers must disclose

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What this exchange is

The Bahamas International Securities Exchange Limited, universally abbreviated as BISX, was incorporated in September 1999 and formally opened for trading in May 2000, when it launched its domestic market for the listing and trading of local public companies. It sits in Nassau, in the Commonwealth of The Bahamas — an English-speaking island nation in the north-western Caribbean, roughly 300 kilometres east of Miami.

Its ISO 10383 Market Identifier Code, the four-character reference used by global data systems to label it, is XBAA.

All prices on BISX are denominated in the Bahamian dollar (B$), which is fixed one-for-one with the US dollar — so B$1 is always worth exactly US$1. Beyond ordinary company shares, BISX trades preferred shares, corporate bonds, and bonds of the Government of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas; it also hosts a growing mutual-fund listing facility that includes both domestic and international funds.

Be candid about scale: this is a small, domestically-focused exchange. Government bonds and mutual-fund listings now account for a large share of what is formally listed here, with company shares forming a modest core.

For a foreign reader, BISX matters chiefly as the only regulated, transparent window into Bahamian public companies — and as the official venue for Bahamas government debt since 2021.

Who owns it

BISX was incorporated as a private, for-profit company on 23 September 1999. It was never a members’ mutual association: it began life, and remains, a private limited company.

BISX is owned by 45 dedicated shareholders comprising stockbrokers, banks, investment companies, pension funds, mutual fund administrators, corporations, and individuals.

BISX’s own shares are not publicly listed on any exchange. It does not belong to a larger regional exchange group.

Keith Davies serves as Chief Executive Officer of BISX. Not published: the BISX corporate-structure page at bisxbahamas.com/about-bisx names the exchange’s general ownership composition but does not publish a current full list of individual shareholders, the size of each stake, or the name of the current chair; the Securities Industry Act 2024 (the governing statute) does not require a privately-held exchange to make its shareholder register public.

Who regulates it

BISX is regulated by the Securities Commission of The Bahamas — the SCB — which is the statutorily created body charged with the regulation and oversight of the securities industry pursuant to the Securities Industry Act. The SCB was established in 1995, and its powers are set out in the Securities Industry Act, which gives it authority to regulate and govern the financial markets under its jurisdiction, authorise and supervise persons subject to licensing or registration, and maintain proper standards of conduct in those markets.

Under the Securities Industry Act and its accompanying regulations, the SCB is empowered to investigate contraventions of securities laws, carry out inspections, and compel evidence; it may require registered firms and their representatives to furnish reports on any matter it requests. In the event that a person appears to have contravened securities laws, the SCB may freeze assets, conduct regulatory hearings, suspend or cancel registrations, suspend trading privileges, and impose penalties.

A listed company is bound both by the rules of the exchange and by the Securities Industry Act — giving it a double layer of regulation. Listing on BISX is a voluntary act by which a company agrees to comply with BISX Rules.

The SCB’s public filings and regulatory documents are published at scb.gov.bs; its offices are at Poinciana House, North Building, 2nd Floor, 31A East Bay Street, Nassau, The Bahamas.

What trades there

BISX publishes a directory of all issuers and securities listed and traded on the exchange; that directory covers ordinary shares, preference shares, secondary listings, corporate debt, and government debt securities. There is a single main board — no separate junior board for early-stage companies is published in the current rulebook.

BISX also operates a mutual-fund listing facility that covers both domestic and international funds, targeted at investors who require the extra visibility afforded by a listing on an established regulated exchange.

BISX publishes a set of rules covering all market participants equally, organised into ten sections: membership, conduct of business, complaints and discipline, trading, clearing and settlement, listing rules for companies, issuers’ continuing obligations, listing rules for mutual funds, secondary listings, and definitions. All rules must be approved first by the BISX board and then by the SCB.

No derivatives market — no options or futures on individual stocks — is operated by BISX.

The BISX All-Share Index is a market-capitalisation-weighted index — meaning larger companies carry proportionally more weight — comprising all primary-market listings excluding debt securities. BISX calculates and publishes the index itself on a daily basis.

Not published: the BISX index-information page at bisxbahamas.com/index-information and the BISX Rules Section 6 (Listing Rules) do not specify a fixed rebalancing or reconstitution schedule; membership in the index appears to update automatically as companies list or delist.

What it takes to list

Before a company may offer shares to the public, it must first file and register a prospectus — a formal disclosure document — with the SCB; only then can it sell shares to the public through an initial public offering. Once registered with the SCB, the company applies for a listing by submitting the required documents to BISX; listing decisions are made by the BISX Listing Committee, a sub-committee of the BISX board.

Under BISX listing rules, each issuer must have a foreseeable market value of at least B$1 million (approximately US$1 million) for shares and B$400,000 (approximately US$400,000) for each class of debt securities; the business must have been in operation for at least three years, and audited annual accounts prepared in accordance with the law of the country in which it is registered must exist. The public offering must cover at least 25% of the class of securities being offered — meaning at least one quarter of the shares must be available to outside investors, what markets call a minimum free float.

Where a new applicant has a controlling shareholder, BISX may require the appointment of a majority of independent non-executive directors; listed securities must be in dematerialised form — held electronically rather than as paper certificates — and freely transferable. Public companies listed on BISX are also subject to the Securities Industry (Corporate Governance) Rules, 2019, promulgated by the SCB.

What companies must tell you

The BISX website publishes quarterly financial statements from listed companies in its Company News and Company Financials sections, and the pattern of filings visible there confirms that quarterly reporting is the norm for equity issuers. Public companies listed on BISX are subject to the Securities Industry (Corporate Governance) Rules, 2019, which impose requirements including the obligation for boards to develop a comprehensive remuneration policy covering directors, executives, and senior management.

Issuers registering a prospectus must disclose the remuneration of directors and senior officers, including cash, bonuses, securities, options, insurance, pensions, housing, automobiles, relocation payments, non-cash gifts, forgiveness of debts, and extensions of loans.

Mutual funds listed on BISX must file financial statements as required under the Investment Funds Act, 2003 and their offering documents; material changes — including changes of auditors, administrators, custodians, or investment managers — must be disclosed to the exchange. BISX requires mutual funds to file their net asset value — the fund’s per-share value calculated by subtracting liabilities from assets — at least quarterly, unless specifically exempted.

Not published: the BISX Rules Section G (Issuer’s Continuing Obligations), listed at bisxbahamas.com/bisx-rules/, is referenced by name but the full text of that section was not accessible via the exchange’s own PDF links at the time of writing. The Securities Industry Act 2024 (the current governing statute, as confirmed by scb.gov.bs) provides the overarching framework; specific deadlines for filing audited annual accounts, the exact threshold at which a shareholder must disclose a major holding, and the precise rules for related-party transactions — deals between a listed company and its own directors or large shareholders — are contained in BISX Rules Section G and in the Corporate Governance Rules 2019, but the numeric thresholds are not individually restated on any publicly accessible English-language page of the exchange or the SCB.

The SCB enforces disclosure requirements and its public filing registry is accessible via scb.gov.bs.

How trading works

Trading on BISX occurs Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (which is the same as Nassau local time, as The Bahamas observes EST year-round), except on Bahamian public holidays.

That gives the exchange roughly 245 to 250 trading days per year. Trading runs continuously throughout those hours rather than in fixed call auctions.

BISX operates an order-driven trading system, meaning that any participant can enter a buy or sell order and the electronic trading system places those orders in a queue where they match with an opposing order; the BISX Automated Trading System ranks orders by certain priorities to ensure fairness and equality in execution. All orders are visible to all buyers and sellers in the system, providing pre-trade transparency.

Not published: the BISX Rules Section D (Trading), listed on bisxbahamas.com/bisx-rules/, governs the specific order types permitted and any price-movement limits — known as volatility parameters — that would pause trading; the exchange’s homepage references “Volatility Parameters” as a published document, but the specific percentage bands were not available in the publicly accessible version of those rules at the time of writing. No market-maker scheme — whereby a designated firm is paid to stand ready to buy and sell at all times — is described in BISX’s published materials.

How a trade is settled

The Central Bank of The Bahamas acts as Registrar and Transfer Agent for Bahamas government securities, and government bonds have traded on BISX since May 2021. Listed securities must be in dematerialised form — meaning ownership is recorded electronically, not on paper share certificates.

Not published: the BISX Rules Section E (Clearing and Settlement), listed on bisxbahamas.com/bisx-rules/, governs the settlement cycle and the identity of the central counterparty or depository. The full text of Section E was not accessible via the exchange’s PDF links at the time of writing; the exchange’s FAQ page and rulebook index confirm that a clearing and settlement framework exists, but the precise number of days between trade and final exchange of cash and shares — whether T+2 or T+3 — is not stated on any publicly accessible English-language page of BISX or the SCB.

To buy or sell shares, an investor contacts a BISX broker-dealer, who carries out the transaction on their behalf. Ownership records are maintained electronically through the exchange’s depository infrastructure.

Whether shares can be registered directly in an investor’s own name or must be held through a broker nominee account is governed by Section E of the BISX Rules; that detail is not restated in publicly accessible summary documents.

Short selling, lending and margin

None of BISX’s published materials — including the rules index at bisxbahamas.com/bisx-rules/, the FAQ at bisxbahamas.com/faqs/, and the About BISX page — describe any facility for short selling (betting that a share price will fall by borrowing and selling shares you do not own), securities lending (renting shares to another party), or margin trading (buying shares with money borrowed from your broker). This is entirely consistent with the exchange’s size and structure.

In a market where daily turnover is modest and most shares trade infrequently, the infrastructure required to support short selling — a liquid lending market, robust margining systems, and active price discovery — does not exist in practice. An investor here should expect to be long-only: you can only profit when prices rise.

Can a foreigner buy here?

To trade, any investor — domestic or foreign — contacts a BISX broker-dealer, who carries out the transaction; a list of broker-dealer members is published in the Members section of the BISX website. There is no requirement to register separately with the SCB as an individual investor.

The Bahamas has no income tax, capital gains tax, or withholding tax applicable to investment returns: The Bahamas currently does not impose withholding taxes on any payments, including those related to profits, income, dividends, or capital gains. That means a foreign investor receives dividends and sale proceeds with no Bahamian tax deducted at source.

Non-residents who do business in The Bahamas enjoy considerable freedom from exchange controls; the repatriation of foreign investment funds, foreign assets, and dividends or profits arising from foreign investment is allowed and facilitated. There is no foreign-listed depositary receipt programme — such as American Depositary Receipts — providing an easier indirect route for overseas investors into BISX-listed companies.

A foreign investor who wants exposure to these companies must open an account with a BISX-registered broker-dealer directly.

What it costs

BISX charges a fee of five basis points (0.05%) plus Value Added Tax for transactions conducted across the exchange. Five basis points on a B$10,000 (approximately US$10,000) trade is B$5 (approximately US$5) before VAT — a modest transaction levy by regional standards.

This fee applies explicitly to government-securities transactions; it is the exchange’s published transaction tariff and is understood to apply market-wide.

Not published: the BISX Proposed Rule and Fee Amendments page at bisxbahamas.com and the BISX Rules Section F (Listing Rules) reference listing fees and annual maintenance fees, but the specific monetary amounts — the initial listing application fee and the annual fee charged to keep a company listed — are not restated in any publicly accessible English-language page of the exchange’s website at the time of writing. The BISX Rules Section F (Listing Rules), available in PDF form at bisxbahamas.com/bisx-rules/, is the definitive source; issuers are advised to request the current fee schedule directly from BISX at [email protected] or +1 (242) 323-2330.

Where the prices are

BISX publishes daily closing price information for all listed and traded securities on its own price sheet at bisxbahamas.com/price-sheet; prices are updated after the close of trading on each trading day. The BISX home page also carries a live ticker during market hours, with a 30-minute delay noted for the ticker data.

Index values and individual price history are published on the exchange’s own Index Information page at bisxbahamas.com/index-information.

BISX is covered by EODHD Historical Data under the exchange suffix .BS, making end-of-day closing prices available through that commercial data service. The exchange is small enough that major real-time data vendors — Bloomberg, Refinitiv — carry limited or no intraday data; English-language coverage of individual BISX-listed companies in the international financial press is sparse precisely because the prices and filings are published only in the exchange’s own portal and not redistributed to the data infrastructure that drives most international investment research.

Any serious investor will need to work directly with the BISX website and its company-news filings.