Cuban-American chamber sketches future Havana stock exchange plan

Around 10 to 15 private entrepreneurs gathered on June 24 to begin sketching a Havana Stock and Commodity Exchange that its backers say is meant for a post-transition Cuba, not for today’s island economy. The Cuban-American National Chamber of Commerce used the meeting to frame a financial architecture that would only make sense after a regime change. What emerged was less a launch than a blueprint, with Havana named as the future center.

Juan Omar Sixto, the chamber president, said the gathering was meant to lay the foundations for a real stock and commodities exchange based in Havana. He folded that idea into a broader ecosystem: a finance institute to train stock brokers, insurance agents, real-estate agents and mortgage brokers, plus an annual world congress of multinational investors designed to bring in long-term capital. The chamber had also prepared a prospectus for 100 multinational companies, a sign that the proposal is being sketched in corporate terms rather than as a political slogan.

Joseph Fernández, the chamber trustee, was positioned as a central figure because of his stock-market background. Fernández owns BWIV, a publicly traded company organized as a SPAC with a capitalization of $180 million, and the plan imagines channeling that kind of capital toward sectors such as tourism and health in Cuba. In practice, that means the chamber is not just talking about a trading floor; it is imagining the institutions, brokers and investor pipelines that would have to exist before any exchange could function.

Sixto argued that Cuban exile investors have historically poured money into real estate and missed the bigger gains that stock-market participation can create. He said that mistake should not be repeated if Cuba ever shifts to a free system. His estimate of the island’s needs was blunt: $200 billion, $300 billion or even $400 billion, because, in his view, Cuba is completely destroyed and would require massive investment from day one.

That is why the Havana exchange plan matters now. It is not an official reform in Cuba, and it is not a market ready to open next month. It is a diaspora-led statement of priorities, showing that some Cuban-American business leaders are already thinking in terms of brokers, listed companies, and multinational capital for the day after political change finally makes that possible.