CIF falls ten cents on first day trading

The Clico Investment Fund (CIF) fell ten cents on its first day of trading yesterday. Trading under the ticker CIF, the fund opened during a listing ceremony at the Trinidad and Tobago Stock Exchange (TTSE) at Nicholas Tower in Port of Spain, at a value of $25 and closed at $24.90.

The TTSE listed 204 million units in the CIF on the Mutual Fund Market. The fund was created by the government of T&T to afford holders of the 11-20 Year Government Bonds the opportunity to redeem their bonds for units in the fund.

Unitholders in the fund will be able to trade their units on the Secondary Market. Jerry Hospedales, chairman of the Clico Trust Corporation Ltd, which is the trustee of the CIF, said the listing is an important milestone for the 14,236 holders of Short Term Investment Products issued by Clico and British American (Trinidad) Ltd.

“They had already accepted government’s settlement offer of a mix of cash and zero-coupon bonds with maturities of 1-10 and 11-20 years to meet their liability of $12.1 billion,” he said. He said 6582 bondholders exchanged their bonds for units during the initial offer period of November 1 to December 14, 2012.

He said the remaining 6606 bondholders who did not, can still do so through any broker registered with the T&T Securities and Exchange Commission.

Asked if the bondholders face any deadline by when their bonds would no longer be convertible to units in the mutual fund, Hospedales said there was none. “It might be that those zerocoupon 11-20 year bonds are meeting, at this time, the requirements of their financial portfolios; but the Clico Trust Corporation has ensured that these bondholders when they wish to do (the trade in), are able to exchange their bonds for units through over-the-counter transactions at minimum cost,” he said.

Hospedales said the Clico Trust Corporation “has been liaising with 38 jurisdictions in which 1166 bondholders reside” adding that the corporation has received “regulatory clearances from three jurisdictions to allow those bondholders resident in these jurisdictions to exchange their bonds for units.”

The three jurisdictions are the Cayman Islands in respect of 91; Guyana in respect of 27; and the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU) in respect of 80 bondholders.”

The 80 bondholders of the ECCU are from Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

“They can, if they had not done so yet, now contact any local broker, registered with the T&T Securities and Exchange Commission to conduct their transactions through overthe- counter transactions.”

Hospedeles said the corporation is “continuing to liaise with the other 35 jurisdictions in which the residual 968 bondholders reside; and I am reasonably assured that the Clico Trust Corporation would be shortly in a position to advise those nonresident bondholders as to the process of exchanging their bonds for units.”

TTSE Chief Executive Officer Wain Iton said the dividend payment schedule for the fund will be semi-annual. TTSE Deputy Chairman Subhas Ramkhelawan said yesterday’s listing is historic because it is the first time the government of T&T is coming to market with a mutual fund listing. Brokers from Scotiabank and RBC attended the listing ceremony.