It's my view that those who describe the statements at the weekend by Lawrence Duprey, the former executive chairman of Clico, as an "audacious demand" a "joke" and a "distraction," are being uncharitable and unkind to someone whose contribution to the development of the country is, perhaps, unparalleled.
Mr Duprey was quoted in the last Sunday Express as issuing a threat that the Government either return control of Clico, the collapsed insurance giant, to him, or he would embark on civil action to force its return.
Unfortunately, the reporter did not get Mr Duprey to comment on how soon he wanted to get back in control of Clico. That point needs to be made because what is clear is that at the end of the process of repaying all of Clico's creditors in full, the company goes back to its original shareholder, CL Financial.
If, therefore, Mr Duprey was referring to the CL Financial shareholders getting back 100 per cent of Clico AFTER its creditors have been paid in full, that is entirely in line with the constitutional right to the protection of property and a citizen's right to enjoy their property.
It is not an "audacious demand" for a significant shareholder of CL Financial, which owns 51 per cent of Clico, to signal that the insurance company should be returned to its owners, AFTER the creditors have been repaid in full.
If what Mr Duprey was signalling, however, was that he is interested in getting Clico back BEFORE its creditors have been repaid in full, I would simply invite him to return to Port-of-Spain to argue his case both before the court of public opinion and before the High Court. I am sure there are very comfortable rooms in that place on upper Frederick St that former FIFA honcho and UNC chairman, Jack Warner, had occasion to overnight in recently. If Mr Duprey has a problem finding the place, he might wish to ask directions of a serious and upright gentleman by the name of Roger Gaspard, who I am sure would be delighted to assist him.
But seriously–and I hope Mr Duprey has not lost his Trini sense of humour in the six years and five months since he last visited home–only last month the Governor of the Central Bank, Jwala Rambarran, had cause to remind the population of the following: "After Central Bank assumed control of Clico in 2009 pursuant to Section 44D of the Central Bank Act, it initiated a forensic investigation into the affairs of Clico.
This investigation was conducted by eminent forensic accountant Mr. Robert Lindquist. Based on the findings of the forensic investigation and the advice of Queen's Counsel received in October 2010, Central Bank and Clico commenced a Breach of Fiduciary Duty civil case in June 2011 against Mr Lawrence Duprey, Mr Andre Monteil and their companies as defendants, as they were considered to be the principal decision makers for the affairs of Clico.
"In March 2013, Ms Gita Sakal was added as a defendant to the case.
"This is an ongoing matter and based on the advice of Queen's Counsel, defendants in this civil claim, where they or their companies are policyholders/creditors of Clico,will not be paid under the terms of the 2015 Clico Resolution Plan, until the determination of the matter by the Court."
In other words, there is no doubt that Mr Duprey has some serious questions to answer about his stewardship of Clico and CL Financial before the issue of issue of him flying in on his magic carpet of choice to take back Clico can even be considered.
This is not to discount the principle that the CL Financial shareholders are entitled to the company when its creditors have been repaid in full.
This does not discount the contribution that Lawrence Duprey made as the only local businessman who ventured into ownership of one of our downstream petrochemical companies. It also does not discount his stewardship of the CL Financial group, for the 13 years that followed its establishment in 1993.
I maintain that the reason Mr Duprey was forced to go cap in hand to the Central Bank in January 2009 was because he paid too much and borrowed too much for Lascelles de Mercado, which he ended up paying US$676 million, when he completed the purchase of the Jamaican spirits giant on July 28, 2008, according to CL Financial's 2007 annual report.
The report states: "The group has raised external debt financing in the amount of US$450 million to finance this equity investment at rates varying between 9.5 per cent and 10.5 per cent per annum."
In disclosing that Lascelles total assets amounted to US$475.9 million and shareholders' equity stood at US$356 million, as at 30 June 2008, the CL Financial annual report made the following ashtonishing statement: "The group is currently in the process of seeking to ascertain the acquisition date fair value of the identifiable net assets of the company."
You are trying to find out the value of the net assets of the company you mortgaged your group to acquire AFTER you paid for the asset three years before you could have?
And this brings me to the most important point of this article, which is that my perception of Lawrence Duprey is of a man of vision, someone who saw how he could connect the Lascelles acquisition with previous purchases such as Angostura and with Burn Stewart to create a global spirits giant that would challenge Diageo, Pernod Ricard and Barcardi....in the same way that he envisaged a global methanol company.
He never struck me as being a nuts and bolts manager in the way some of the local conglomerate managers. He never struck me as the kind of person who would get up early and read all of his board papers from start to finish with a red pen in hand, demanding more data and more facts.
Or would spend weeks negotiating a lower price for an acquisition....and be ready to walk away if he did not get the price he wanted.
I can almost hear the owners of Lascelles pitching a price way beyond what the company was worth, thinking that no one would ever pay so much for the asset...and Lawrence telling them 'I'll take it," and then calling Andre Monteil and saying: "I just bought Lascelles for US$680 million. Arrange the financing for it, nuh."
But is this the kind of man who we wanted handling the details of 15,000 payments. And is this even something that he wants at his age of 81?
Mr Duprey is an excellent dealmaker but a poor negotiator, I think.
That is why he was not able to negotiate better terms for the Memorandum of Understanding in January 2009. He was not willing–as the Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras has done and is doing–to negotiate up to the brink and the deadline and then tell the creditors 'Let the owners decide.'
On a related issue, with the benefit of hindsight, it seems to me that Mr Duprey, and his advisers including Ram Ramesh, the former CEO of CMMB, were incorrect in their assessment that what CL Financial/Clico was suffering from was a liquidity situation and not a solvency problem.
In the January 13, 2009 letter to then Central Bank Governor Ewart Williams, Duprey argued that the group needed urgent liquidity support.
He said: "We are in the process of realigning the asset-liability structure of the group to better meet the current liquidity situation. This is a complex action plan that we are embarking on immediately, including initiatives such as merger of certain entities within the group with strategic partners and/or sale of certain assets in order to raise liquidity.
"As you would appreciate, these initiatives would need some time before they yield the desired results. In the event that the financial crisis deepened in the local market, we may need urgent liquidity support to be made available to the group.
"In this regard, we would like to discuss the approach of the Central Bank toward supporting the financial sector and, by extension, the CL Financial Group, if conditions were to deteriorate."
I am subject to correction but my understanding is that companies are considered to be insolvent if they are unable to pay their debts as they fall due in the usual course of business or their liabilities exceed the reasonable market value of their assets.
My understanding is that companies have liquidity issues if they do not have the cash to pay their short-term obligations.
Clico's 2009 audited financial statement indicates that for the year ended December 31, 2008, the insurance company had assets of $18.5 billion and liabilities of $23 billion. This means that two weeks before Mr Duprey wrote to the then Central Bank Governor, Clico had negative net worth of $4.5 billion, which more than doubled a year later.