Bond­hold­ers of three com­pa­nies con­trolled by Ja­maican-Cana­di­an in­vestor Michael Lee-Chin are prepar­ing for a de­ci­sive, but as yet un­sched­uled, vote next month that could de­ter­mine the fate of more than US$364 mil­lion in debt ex­pe­ri­enc­ing ‘Events of De­fault’ — and po­ten­tial­ly, a sig­nif­i­cant share­hold­ing in NCB Fi­nan­cial Group, which he chairs.

The com­pa­nies that Lee-Chin used to raise the mon­ey—AIC (Bar­ba­dos) Ltd, Port­land (Bar­ba­dos) Ltd (PBL), and Spe­cial­ty Cof­fee In­vest­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd — have pledged 1.06 bil­lion shares in NCB Fi­nan­cial Group Ltd (NCBFG). Those shares rep­re­sent 41 per cent of NCBFG’s out­stand­ing stock and are cen­tral to Lee-Chin’s con­trol of the fi­nan­cial con­glom­er­ate. NCBFG owns 61.77 per cent of Guardian Hold­ings Lim­it­ed (GHL), which is head­quar­tered in West­moor­ings, Trinidad, and is one of the largest in­sur­ance com­pa­nies in the re­gion.

The bonds is­sued by the three com­pa­nies, to­talling US$364.44 mil­lion are dis­ag­gre­gat­ed as fol­lows

* AIC (Bar­ba­dos)—US$161.43 mil­lion and J$2.2 bil­lion (US$13.66 mil­lion)

* Port­land (Bar­ba­dos)—US$164.21 mil­lion and J$320 mill (US$2 mil­lion)

* Spe­cial­i­ty Cof­fee In­vest­ment—J$3.725 bil­lion (US$23.14 mil­lion)

Failed re­struc­tur­ing bid

In Ju­ly, note­hold­ers of the three com­pa­nies were asked to vote on res­o­lu­tions to re­struc­ture the ‘delin­quent’ bonds — in­clud­ing a de­fer­ral of prin­ci­pal re­pay­ments and for­bear­ance on col­lat­er­al cov­er­age, un­til De­cem­ber 31, 2027, ac­cord­ing to no­tices sent to bond­hold­ers, which were seen by the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian. Any short­fall in in­ter­est would be cleared by the ex­tend­ed ma­tu­ri­ty. Each US$10,000 in nom­i­nal val­ue was equiv­a­lent to one vote. How­ev­er, the re­quest failed to meet the 75 per cent su­per­ma­jor­i­ty re­quired for ap­proval:

* For the US$10.4 mil­lion PBL bond, 63 per cent of votes were cast against the re­struc­tur­ing pro­pos­al, with on­ly sev­en per cent in favour. Even af­ter the vot­ing pe­ri­od was ex­tend­ed to Sep­tem­ber 4, sup­port for the re­struc­tur­ing re­mained well be­low the thresh­old;

* The US$80 mil­lion PBL bond drew 34.1 per cent in favour, 30.8 per cent against; and

* The US$100 mil­lion AIC bond saw 26 per cent in favour and 17 per cent against.

The US$190.4 mil­lion in the three bonds rep­re­sents con­firmed bal­lot re­sults.

Votes for Spe­cial­ty Cof­fee were not im­me­di­ate­ly avail­able, though note­hold­ers pre­vi­ous­ly re­ject­ed a one-year ex­ten­sion in June 2024. The Spe­cial­ty Cof­fee In­vest­ment Com­pa­ny bonds, which ma­tured in 2024 and 2025, orig­i­nal­ly car­ried in­ter­est rates of 9.75 per cent on Ja­maican dol­lar tranch­es and 7.25 per cent on US dol­lar tranch­es.

Some Port­land (Bar­ba­dos) Ltd’s notes of­fered 9.5 per cent in Ja­maican dol­lars and 6.5 per cent in US dol­lars, while some AIC (Bar­ba­dos) in­stru­ments car­ried 9.5 per cent (JMD) and 6.75 per cent (USD).

In a no­tice to in­vestors, JCSD Trustee Ser­vices Ltd con­firmed: “This is to there­fore con­firm that the is­suer res­o­lu­tions sub­mit­ted have not been suf­fi­cient­ly vot­ed on to be passed by the note­hold­ers. Pur­suant to ar­ti­cle 10.1 Note­hold­ers’ waiv­er of the trust deed, we ad­vise that the pro­pos­al did not meet the re­quire­ments for our ap­proval.”

The com­pa­nies (PBL & AIC) have now been for­mal­ly cit­ed for Events of De­fault, in­clud­ing:

—Prin­ci­pal due and un­paid;

—In­ter­est due and un­paid;

—Se­cu­ri­ty mar­gin be­low min­i­mum main­te­nance re­quire­ments (see mar­gin call let­ter is­sued Au­gust 11, 2025); and

—Fail­ure to pro­vide au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments.

JCSD Trustee Ser­vices man­ag­er Je­vaugh Leon ex­plained: “As stat­ed in our pre­vi­ous cor­re­spon­dence, our ex­ter­nal le­gal coun­sel has ad­vised that the vote for ac­cel­er­a­tion and/or en­force­ment dur­ing the oc­cur­rence of an event of de­fault, must be held in per­son. Fur­ther, we had pre­vi­ous­ly shared that the note­hold­ers meet­ing (to fa­cil­i­tate the vot­ing) is be­ing pro­posed for No­vem­ber 2025.”

Ne­go­ti­at­ing com­mit­tee formed

De­spite the set­back, note­hold­ers did ap­prove the for­ma­tion of a nine-mem­ber ne­go­ti­at­ing com­mit­tee, backed by sev­en in­vestor groups. The US$10.4 mil­lion Port­land (Bar­ba­dos) bond saw 65 per cent of votes in favour and 20 per cent against, com­fort­ably above the 50 per cent thresh­old.

That nine-mem­ber com­mit­tee con­vened its first meet­ing on Sep­tem­ber 5 and will serve un­til Oc­to­ber 31. Al­though it will ne­go­ti­ate on be­half of all bond­hold­ers, any fi­nal de­ci­sion will rest with the in­di­vid­ual note­hold­er groups.

The com­mit­tee’s mem­ber­ship in­cludes:

* Er­ic Craw­ford (for­mer PwC part­ner, in­di­vid­ual in­vestor)

* John Gra­ham (at­tor­ney-at-law, in­di­vid­ual in­vestor)

* Pe­ter Moses (for­mer Citibank CEO, in­di­vid­ual in­vestor)

* Christo­pher Za­c­ca (Group Pres­i­dent and CEO, Sagi­cor Group Ja­maica, rep­re­sent­ing Sagi­cor In­vest­ments Ja­maica Ltd)

* Richar­do Williams (Bari­ta In­vest­ments Ltd)

* Court­ney Camp­bell (Group Pres­i­dent and CEO, VM Group)

* Kei­th Dun­can (Group CEO, JMMB Group, rep­re­sent­ing JMMB Se­cu­ri­ties Ltd)

* Ka­reem Tom­lin­son (GK Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment Ltd)

* Charles King (Fig Tree Fi­nan­cial)

Joan­na Banks will serve as al­ter­nate for Za­c­ca, while Christo­pher Gre­go­ry is al­ter­nate for King.

Sev­er­al Ja­maican in­sti­tu­tion­al in­vestors are sit­ting on a fair bit of ex­po­sure to these bonds. Over the past two years, mu­tu­al fund man­agers have qui­et­ly trimmed their hold­ings. Still, for some funds, the pic­ture re­mains weight­ed — AIC and PBL pa­per con­tin­ues to ac­count for any­where be­tween 15 and 30 per cent of to­tal as­sets of cer­tain mu­tu­al funds.

Im­pli­ca­tions for NCBFG and the Mar­ket

The stakes are high.

In its Ju­ly 2025 pre­lim­i­nary of­fer­ing mem­o­ran­dum for a US$300 mil­lion bond raise, NCB Fi­nan­cial Group dis­closed that rough­ly 50.5 per cent of its out­stand­ing shares, con­trolled or ul­ti­mate­ly held by Lee-Chin, are pledged as col­lat­er­al for debt, which was said to be ‘delin­quent’ with re­spect to prin­ci­pal and in­ter­est. NCBFG warned that en­force­ment of the re­lat­ed se­cu­ri­ty in­ter­est “could re­sult in our con­trol­ling share­hold­er and chair­man los­ing con­trol of the Group.”

That sce­nario, while hy­po­thet­i­cal, would have far-reach­ing im­pli­ca­tions for mar­ket sta­bil­i­ty, in­vestor con­fi­dence, and the gov­er­nance of one of the Caribbean’s most sys­tem­i­cal­ly im­por­tant fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

Lee-Chin has re­duced his hold­ings in NCB Fi­nan­cial Group, un­load­ing just un­der 23 mil­lion shares through AIC (Bar­ba­dos). The sales, com­plet­ed in 2025, fetched about J$1.08 bil­lion, or rough­ly US$6.7 mil­lion. As at June 30, 2025, AIC (Bar­ba­dos) still held a com­mand­ing stake in NCB Fi­nan­cial Group — 1.195 bil­lion shares, or rough­ly 46.25 per cent of the com­pa­ny.

In May this year, the NCBFG board and Lee-Chin agreed to mu­tu­al­ly ter­mi­nate a long-stand­ing ser­vices agree­ment with AIC Glob­al Hold­ings — a deal that paid Lee-Chin in ex­cess of US$10 mil­lion in the year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024. Un­der the arrange­ment, he re­ceived US$6.05 mil­lion for the six months end­ed March 31, 2025.

For now, note­hold­ers must de­cide whether to en­force their se­cu­ri­ty, risk a forced sale of NCBFG shares, or ac­cept an­oth­er de­fer­ral in hopes of even­tu­al re­pay­ment.

Ei­ther way, the No­vem­ber meet­ing will be more than a pro­ce­dur­al vote — it will be a test of con­fi­dence in Lee-Chin’s abil­i­ty to re­store cred­i­bil­i­ty and liq­uid­i­ty to his in­vest­ment en­ti­ties.