Finance Minister Colm Imbert said yesterday “confusion” over which CL Financial entity owns the group’s Republic Bank shares is slowing down the monetisation of the bank as part of the repayment of monies owed to the Government by the group, which collapsed in January 2009.
Addressing a news conference at the Ministry of Finance building in downtown Port-of-Spain, Imbert said there was confusion over whether shares are owned by Clico or Clico Investment Bank.
He said the former Central Bank governor Jwala Rambarran was going to take the matter to court to allow a judge to make a determination on which entity owns the shares.
“I felt that would take too long. That could stay in the court for the next five years and we would never know who owns the shares and never be able to dispose of them,” Imbert said.
He said the current Governor Alvin Hilaire has adopted a more pragmatic approach to the issue, in which consensus would be sought before going to the court for a consent order.
Imbert said: “The plan is that by the end of fiscal 2017 the Republic Bank shares will either be disposed of entirely or transferred to the Government for it to decide what to do with them.”
Republic Bank’s 2015 annual report indicates that four CL Financial entities own shares in the bank, T&T’s largest:
• Clico Trust Corporation owns 40,072,299 shares or 24.74 per cent of Republic
• Clico Investment Bank (CIB) owns 16,196,905 shares or 17.97 per cent of Republic
• First Company Ltd (believed to be a CIB subsidiary) owns 13,191,640 shares or 8.14 per cent of Republic
• Clico owns 11,786,000 shares or 7.28 per cent of Republic
Imbert said the Government was also looking into what should be done with Angostura and CL World Brands, two of the spirits entities in the empire that was established by Lawrence Duprey.
The minister said the transfer of Clico’s shares worth $3 billion in Angostura, CL World Brands and Home Construction Ltd to the Government had not been done as ye, but will be done as the Government needs the money.
But he said his understanding is that the shareholders of CL Financial want to retain control of Angostura and CL World Brands so that they can raise a loan to repay the Government.
Imbert said he now met with the Central Bank every Wednesday and one of the issues that was always on the agenda was the Clico situation. He said the Central Bank had offered to sell Clico’s traditional portfolio to some 17 entities that did business in T&T.
He said a letter would soon go from CL Financial to the minority shareholders of Methanol Holdings (International) Ltd, offering to sell them Clico’s 56 per cent stake in the Oman-based methanol plant for $2 billion, which was the valuation price.
The right-of-first refusal is enshrined in the shareholders’ agreement that led to the establishment of MHIL.
Imbert also told journalists the Government had agreed to guarantee a loan of US$5 million ($33 million) by the T&T Ex-Im Bank to a toilet paper producing plant in Arima to save 400 jobs and that the Government would continue to operate a managed float of the exchange rate, although the International Monetary Fund was advising “greater flexibility,” which he said meant a freely floating exchange rate.