An­drea Perez-Sobers
Se­nior Re­porter
an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt


Dig­i­cel Group has moved to re­ject a re­gion­al me­dia re­port that its chair­man Ra­jeev Suri has been asked to re­sign over an al­leged con­tro­ver­sial deal, in­sist­ing that he re­tains the full back­ing of the com­pa­ny’s board and share­hold­ers.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny dis­missed the re­port as spec­u­la­tion and reaf­firmed Suri’s po­si­tion as chair­man.

“We do not com­ment on un­found­ed spec­u­la­tion and base­less ru­mours,” the com­pa­ny said.

“Ra­jeev Suri re­mains chair­man of Dig­i­cel Group and has the full con­fi­dence and sup­port of Dig­i­cel’s board and share­hold­ers.”

The state­ment comes af­ter a re­port in a re­gion­al me­dia out­let claimed that Suri had been asked to re­sign fol­low­ing an al­leged con­tro­ver­sial deal. Dig­i­cel did not iden­ti­fy the re­port or pro­vide de­tails of the trans­ac­tion in its state­ment.

In­stead, the com­pa­ny de­fend­ed Suri’s role and point­ed to his con­tri­bu­tion to Dig­i­cel fol­low­ing its ma­jor fi­nan­cial re­struc­tur­ing.

“As chair­man, he con­tin­ues to lead the Board in over­see­ing the Group’s strat­e­gy and long-term de­vel­op­ment,” Dig­i­cel said.

The com­pa­ny al­so cred­it­ed Suri with help­ing strength­en its fi­nan­cial po­si­tion fol­low­ing the re­struc­tur­ing, which was com­plet­ed in ear­ly 2024.

“Ra­jeev played a piv­otal role in turn­ing around Dig­i­cel af­ter its re­struc­tur­ing when the com­pa­ny came close to bank­rupt­cy un­der its pre­vi­ous own­er­ship,” the state­ment said.

“Un­der his lead­er­ship, Dig­i­cel has very sig­nif­i­cant­ly strength­ened its fi­nan­cial po­si­tion and earned two cred­it rat­ing up­grades.”

The com­pa­ny added that Suri’s lead­er­ship “re­mains cen­tral to the group’s strat­e­gy, con­tin­ued progress and long-term suc­cess”.

Dig­i­cel’s cur­rent cor­po­rate in­for­ma­tion lists Suri as chair­man of the board. It al­so iden­ti­fies De­nis O’Brien, Dig­i­cel’s founder, as a non-ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor.

Suri took over the chair­man­ship dur­ing Dig­i­cel’s 2024 re­struc­tur­ing, re­plac­ing O’Brien, who had led the board for more than two decades.

Dig­i­cel an­nounced in Feb­ru­ary 2024 that its new board was led by Suri, with O’Brien re­main­ing an eq­ui­ty hold­er and board di­rec­tor.

The re­struc­tur­ing in­volved a US$1.7 bil­lion debt-for-eq­ui­ty trans­ac­tion that re­duced O’Brien’s stake and trans­ferred con­trol­ling in­flu­ence to a con­sor­tium of bond­hold­ers.

O’Brien found­ed Dig­i­cel in Ja­maica in 2001 and ex­pand­ed the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny across the Caribbean and oth­er mar­kets. He served as chair­man for 23 years be­fore step­ping down in Jan­u­ary 2024.