Suzanne Shep­pard

On the heels of the bid by the Ansa McAL Group for con­trol of Banks Hold­ings Ltd (BHL) comes word that the T&T-based con­glom­er­ate has al­ready bought BW­PL Hold­ings Ltd, the sec­ond largest share­hold­er in BHL.

That deal, which was fi­nalised on Oc­to­ber 16, gives Ansa McAL 8,446,546 com­mon shares–ap­prox­i­mate­ly 13 per cent of BHL's is­sued share cap­i­tal. The group al­so owns near­ly 15,000 shares through its whol­ly-owned sub­sidiary Ansa McAl (Bar­ba­dos) Ltd. The com­pa­ny has not re­vealed how much it paid for BW­PL Hold­ings.

Do­minic Hadeed, own­er of Blue Wa­ters Prod­ucts Ltd, re­signed as chair­man of BW­PL Hold­ings on the day that its sale to Ansa McAL was com­plet­ed.

The con­glom­er­ate is mak­ing its of­fer to ac­quire BHL through AM Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Ven­tures Ltd, a sub­sidiary set up sole­ly for that pur­pose. Its of­fer to BHL share­hold­ers $5.20 per share is the ap­prox­i­mate fair mar­ket val­ue of the shares as de­ter­mined by BHL's fi­nan­cial ad­vis­er, KP­MG. The of­fer, to­talling a $337.2 mil­lion, is an im­prove­ment on the $4 a share of­fer from Brazil­ian bev­er­ages gi­ant Am­bev, which is al­so vy­ing to take over the Bar­ba­dos com­pa­ny.

Am­bev, through its sub­sidiary SLU Bev­er­ages, cur­rent­ly owns just over 40 per cent of BHL. Its takeover of­fer ex­pires on Mon­day at 3 pm.

How­ev­er, at least one BHL share­hold­er is lob­by­ing for both of­fers to be re­ject­ed. Den­nis Clarke, a re­tired Bar­ba­di­an trade union­ist, has ex­pressed his op­po­si­tion to the planned take over of the is­land's largest bev­er­age man­u­fac­ture by out­side in­vestors.

He told a Bar­ba­dos news­pa­per it could lead to fur­ther re­trench­ment in the pri­vate sec­tor at a time when the coun­try is al­ready grap­pling with high un­em­ploy­ment. Clarke said he is al­so con­cerned about what a take over would mean for small share­hold­ers in BHL and he hopes the com­pa­ny can re­main in Bar­ba­di­an hands

He said he did not want BHL to go the way of the for­mer Bar­ba­dos Na­tion­al Bank and Bar­ba­dos Ship­ping & Trad­ing, which are now owned by T&T con­glom­er­ates.

BHL owns Banks (Bar­ba­dos) Brew­eries Ltd, Bar­ba­dos Bot­tling Com­pa­ny Ltd and Bar­ba­dos Dairy In­dus­tries Ltd. Its range of bev­er­ages in­cludes lead­ing in­ter­na­tion­al brands pro­duced un­der li­cense such as Co­ca-Co­la, Sprite and Guin­ness and orig­i­nals like Fru­tee, Tiger Malt, Pine­hill juices and milks and Banks Beer.

Ac­qui­si­tion of the com­pa­ny will give Ansa McAL con­trol of every ma­jor beer brand pro­duced in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean, adding to a port­fo­lio that cur­rent­ly in­cludes Carib, Stag, Mack­e­son and Red Stripe.