Group wants a ticker at Rye

By Katherine Tam

The Ryerson Stock Exchange (RSE) is hoping that with the right sponsors and support from business students and faculty, its proposed stock ticker for the business building will be up and running next year.

RSE president and fourth-year business accounting student Rachel Kagan said her group is talking to Reuters Canada, a news wire service, about setting up a business proposal for the ticker. She hopes that it will help attract big-name corporate advertising such as Nesbitt Burns, CIBC, and the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Kagan said the ticker will give Ryerson more prestige.

“U of T and McMaster already have funded tickers,” said Kagan, who plans to stay for an extra semester next year to pursue the plan while taking extra courses.

The ticker—an eight-foot-wide computer screen—would be placed above the

main doors inside the business building. Like the ones at the TSE on King Street West, it will carry the latest market prices during regular trading hours.

Kagan hoped to have the proposal completed by this year.

But Kagan said she hasn’t had time to secure the deal because the RSE was only formed in November and wasn’t able to firm up its membership until recently.

Once she worked out the basic costs for the ticker, she said she realized that student support wasn’t going to be enough to pay for it.

“According to Reuters, it’s going to cost $2,000 to $4,000 per month just to maintain the ticker,” Kagan says. “We haven’t got the set-up costs sorted out, but it’s going to be expensive. There’s a lot of wiring involved.”

Kagan’s plan is to have Ryerson’s ticket funded entirely by corporate sponsors, just like at the University of Toronto and McMaster University. As part of their investment, corporate ads would appear on the ticket.

Most business students support the idea.

“It’s great,” said first-year finance student Denish Bajvasar, who owns shares in his father’s CD-making company, Cinram International. “We get current prices rather than having to wait for the quotes in the papers. It saves time and it’s very informative.”