Gail Alexan­der

As Cli­co and CL Fi­nan­cial share­hold­ers await bud­get state­ments on the fu­ture of the com­pa­ny's as­sets, they've shelved ini­tial scep­ti­cism and agreed in prin­ci­ple to Gov­ern­ment's pro­posed San­dals ho­tel de­vel­op­ment on their Gold­en Grove es­tate in To­ba­go.

Carl­ton Reis, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Dal­co, the largest CLF share­hold­er, con­firmed this af­ter share­hold­ers of both en­ti­ties met Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert re­cent­ly.

Reis, who said he al­so rep­re­sents CLF ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er Lawrence Duprey, said share­hold­ers, in­clud­ing Unit­ed Share­hold­ers Lim­it­ed (USL), have agreed on the ho­tel idea af­ter re­ceiv­ing as­sur­ances about the re­turn of sev­er­al CLF com­pa­nies.

He said the group will shelve pre­vi­ous con­cerns about the To­ba­go project on their es­tate and work with Gov­ern­ment.

"We don't have a prob­lem with the plan. As busi­ness­men we want to see To­ba­go de­vel­oped. This (San­dals) project will ben­e­fit To­ba­go and T&T's ho­tel in­dus­try, putting us on the map," he said

Cli­co has been un­der Cen­tral Bank su­per­vi­sion since the 2009 col­lapse of the for­mer fi­nan­cial gi­ant. Share­hold­ers says Cen­tral Bank law stip­u­lates guid­ing the com­pa­ny un­til sol­vent and "hand­ing it back to share­hold­ers af­ter." Gov­ern­ment es­ti­mates the bailout debt is around $23bil­lion.

Im­bert had said he would de­tail fu­ture di­rec­tions for CLF/Cli­co as­sets in his Bud­get speech to be de­liv­ered on Fri­day. In the 2016 fis­cal pack­age, Im­bert said he in­tend­ed to bring the mat­ter to an am­i­ca­ble con­clu­sion and out­lined cer­tain moves.

In the April mid-year re­view, he gave fur­ther de­tails on cer­tain CLF as­sets and he fur­ther out­lined res­o­lu­tion of Cli­co is­sues in Ju­ly.

Cli­co's sub­sidiaries, Oc­ci­den­tal In­vest­ments Ltd (OIL) and Ocean­ic Prop­er­ties Ltd (OPL), own the 600-acre Gold­en Grove es­tate, in­clud­ing the sand spit known as No Man's Land which is at the cen­tre of the San­dals plan. To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) chair­man Orville Lon­don, at last week's con­sul­ta­tion on the San­dals plan, as­sured that No Man's Land and Ny­lon Pool would not be touched.

In May Duprey had said he would fight to keep the es­tate since he had been speak­ing with UK-Eu­ro­pean in­vestors on a pro­posed $3 bil­lion ho­tel de­vel­op­ment.

Reis said yes­ter­day that Duprey, who is based over­seas, wasn't part of the lo­cal ne­go­ti­a­tions but was work­ing with and ad­vis­ing him "on these is­sues and with the To­ba­go lands." "He's will­ing to work with it and help con­tribute to­wards de­vel­op­ment of the twin is­land state. In ne­go­ti­a­tions some­times you have to give to get," he said.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Duprey said he wasn't part of the re­cent ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Reis ex­pects the To­ba­go plan to in­volve Cli­co trans­fer­ring own­er­ship of the land to the THA. This will off­set part of its debt to Gov­ern­ment. He said the group can al­so work with Gov­ern­ment on the ho­tel de­vel­op­ment via its sub­sidiary Home Con­struc­tion Lim­it­ed

The es­tate was val­ued at ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$35 mil­lion three years ago, ac­cord­ing to re­ports.

Reis said while the group sup­ports the plan in prin­ci­ple, rep­re­sen­ta­tives are still to dis­cuss the over­all po­si­tion and are await­ing Bud­get state­ments on the is­sue.

More in­fo

In April, Im­bert asked Unit­ed Share­hold­ers Lim­it­ed to iden­ti­fy what CLF share­hold­ers want­ed and ex­pect­ed. Spokes­men for USL said share­hold­ers were "tak­en aback" at Im­bert's mid-year re­view plan for CLF.

They de­tailed pro­pos­als, en­vis­ag­ing CLF would re­main with vary­ing per­cent­ages and re­tain con­trol of six com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Lim­it­ed, Colfire Lim­it­ed and Home Con­struc­tion Lim­it­ed.

In Ju­ly the group wrote to Im­bert ex­press­ing anger at per­ceived "de­cep­tion and be­tray­al" be­cause no in­for­ma­tion on the size of Cli­co's debt and dis­pos­ing of as­sets was giv­en be­fore talks on the mat­ter. They be­gan moves to­ward le­gal ac­tion.

How­ev­er, when Im­bert met them in Au­gust, be­fore the share­hold­ers' agree­ment ex­pired, they were giv­en the as­sur­ance that share­hold­ers would have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to raise the mon­ey to re­pay their debt and to buy back com­pa­ny as­sets. Reis said the last Gov­ern­ment had not fa­cil­i­tat­ed that.

"But this Gov­ern­ment is do­ing it a lit­tle dif­fer­ent and is more un­der­stand­ing. For the first time, we feel things are a lit­tle more on the right path."

The share­hold­ers ex­pect to have ne­go­ti­a­tions with Gov­ern­ment on re­pay­ing the debt. Reis said noth­ing was signed and they are still in talks, but the debt may be less now–around $20 bil­lion–"since we re­paid some af­ter Methanol Com­pa­ny sale."He added: "We're clear the six com­pa­nies must be ob­tained by Cli­co again and we feel pos­i­tive with the re­sponse so far." Reis said the share­hold­er's agree­ment, which al­lows Gov­ern­ment to have a say in CLF busi­ness, wasn't re­newed af­ter the Au­gust ex­pi­ra­tion since they want to know the re­al size of the debt.