Raphael John-Lall

Re­pub­lic Bank has de­clined com­ment on re­ports that it is among some of large share­hold­ers in Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) seek­ing to oust the board of the fi­nan­cial­ly trou­bled ce­ment com­pa­ny.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, 18 of TCL's big­ger share­hold­ers, in­clud­ing Re­pub­lic Bank, the Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion (UTC), the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board (NIB) and Bourne In­vest­ment Ltd of Bar­ba­dos, are try­ing to force out sev­er­al mem­bers of the cur­rent board of di­rec­tors. Al­so among those share­hold­ers–all of whom signed doc­u­ments con­firm­ing their par­tic­i­pa­tion in a req­ui­si­tion for a meet­ing to re­move the di­rec­tors–are some of the com­pa­ny's large in­di­vid­ual share­hold­ers, such as He­len Bhag­wans­ingh and Stephen Es­pinet.

The oth­er ma­jor TCL share­hold­ers, who to­geth­er hold 54.7 per cent of shares, are Tatil Life, a trust fund ac­count con­trolled by RBC and the com­pa­ny's largest sin­gle share­hold­er, Mex­i­can ce­ment gi­ant Ce­mex.

Yes­ter­day, of­fi­cials of Re­pub­lic Bank told the T&T Guardian they would not to com­ment on the mat­ter. How­ev­er, word is that the dis­grun­tled share­hold­ers want TCL's CEO Rollin Bernard, Bar­ba­di­an Dr Leonard Nurse, Andy Bha­jan, Bevon Fran­cis and Bri­an Young re­moved as di­rec­tors and have pro­vid­ed their own list of di­rec­tors to im­me­di­ate­ly take con­trol of the com­pa­ny.

The three di­rec­tors who are not the sub­ject of the req­ui­si­tion are Wayne Yip Choy, Ale­jan­dro Can­tu of Ce­mex and Jean Michel Al­lard of the In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nance Cor­po­ra­tion.

News of the planned ouster was first re­port­ed in a trade pub­li­ca­tion, Glob­al Ce­ment, on Thurs­day. Glob­al Ce­ment re­port­ed that TCL, the Caribbean's on­ly ce­ment pro­duc­er, is fac­ing deep fi­nan­cial prob­lems de­spite the favourable com­pet­i­tive po­si­tion it holds in most Cari­com coun­tries. In Bar­ba­dos, the Arawak ce­ment plant is the sole ce­ment provider. TCL al­so op­er­ates Caribbean Ce­ment Ltd in Ja­maica, while its biggest op­er­a­tion is in T&T.

Prob­lems have been brew­ing be­tween TCL's board and share­hold­ers for sev­er­al months over the com­pa­ny's poor fi­nan­cial per­for­mances.

Ear­li­er this year, TCL an­nounced plans to is­sue se­nior se­cured first lien notes (bonds) not ex­ceed­ing an ag­gre­gate prin­ci­pal amount of US$325 mil­lion. The bonds were to be is­sued ap­prox­i­mate­ly 80 per cent in a US dol­lar tranche, and the re­main­der in a TT dol­lar tranche and the pro­ceeds were to be used by the com­pa­ny to re­pay its debts. How­ev­er, the TCL board lat­er de­cid­ed to post­pone the re­fi­nanc­ing and await more favourable mar­ket con­di­tions.