Minority Shareholders' Rights Advocate Peter Permell says he's concerned that thousands of Sagicor Financial Corporation shareholders, resident in T&T, have not yet received their Shareholders Package via post. "Shareholderswere told several weeks ago that this important and necessary bit of correspondence would contain the Offering Circular, a Shareholder Guide and a Provisional Allotment Letter (PAL). The PAL outlines the number of rights the shareholder can exercise to purchase the common shares as well as contains the subscription form for the Preference Shares which has a unique identification number," he observed.
In a release issued yesterday Permell pointed out that in a newspaper advertisement of June 15, Sagicor indicated that the designated subscription agent in Trinidad is West Indies Stockbrokers Ltd and that shareholders should receive their package by June 17. He observed that the advertisement stated that if shareholders did not receive their packages, they were to contact West Indies Stockbrokers.
"However, despite numerous telephone calls to the agent, I, along with other shareholders, was only able to get through to the company's automated answering service with no real person at the other end available to take our calls or respond to our queries.
"This in my humble opinion is totally unacceptable andhas now added insult to injury as Sagicor's advertisement informing shareholders of the particulars and key dates pertaining to the Rights Issue and New Preference Shares Subscription was only published the morning of June 15, 2010, the opening date of the subscription." "This state of affairs is made even worse when takes in to account the early closing date of the subscription of June 28, 2010 along with the fact that in T&T unlike Barbados (the registered jurisdiction of the company) therewere two public holidays Labour Day and Corpus Christi on June 20 and 23, 2010 respectively, which means that shareholders only have approximatelyseven working days to complete their subscription," he said.
"And this does not take into account the fact that the shareholders would have to try to source scarce foreign exchange since the subscription price is quoted in US dollars. "Finally, for the avoidance of any doubt, I am not in any waypromoting any conspiracy theory here but what I am doing is calling on Sagicor and the T&T Stock Exchange to ensure that all T&T shareholders are given a fair chance to complete their subscription even if means extending the deadline date," he added.