Yes­ter­day marked the third an­niver­sary of the news con­fer­ence dur­ing which the Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank, Ewart Williams, and the then Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Karen Tesheira, an­nounced to a shocked na­tion that Cli­co and its sis­ter com­pa­ny, Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank, were suf­fer­ing "liq­uid­i­ty prob­lems." At the news con­fer­ence, Gov­er­nor Williams said that the cur­rent fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties be­ing faced by Cli­co and CIB were caused by ex­ces­sive re­lat­ed-par­ty lend­ing, an ag­gres­sive high in­ter­est rate mo­bil­i­sa­tion strat­e­gy to fi­nance high-risk in­vest­ments in most­ly illiq­uid as­sets and the very high bor­row­ing by the com­pa­nies against these as­sets. The news con­fer­ence three years ago marked the be­gin­ning of a night­mare for thou­sands of lo­cal in­di­vid­u­als who in­vest­ed bil­lions of dol­lars in Cli­co, which was one of the old­est in­dige­nous fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, hav­ing been es­tab­lished by Cyril Duprey and Cyril Mon­san­to in 1937. In the last three years, much has tran­spired: The Cen­tral Bank took con­trol of CIB and Cli­co and the Gov­ern­ment agreed to make bil­lions of tax­pay­ers' dol­lars avail­able to bail out the two com­pa­nies-as well as their sis­ter com­pa­ny British Amer­i­can In­sur­ance.

Giv­en the small size of T&T's fi­nan­cial sec­tor and the ex­tent to which Cli­co and its par­ent com­pa­ny, CL Fi­nan­cial, were con­nect­ed with or owed mon­ey to oth­er fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions in T&T and across the re­gion, many would agree with the then Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion to in­ter­vene to bail out pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­nies. In the fol­low­ing 15 months, the Gov­ern­ment pumped $5 bil­lion in­to Cli­co, much of which was con­vert­ed in­to pref­er­ence shares that are con­vert­ible in­to a 49 per cent stake in the in­sur­er. An ad­di­tion­al $2.3 bil­lion in fi­nanc­ing was dis­bursed to en­sure that the in­di­vid­ual, third-par­ty de­pos­i­tors in CIB re­ceived 100 per cent of their in­vest­ments. In the pe­ri­od that fol­lowed, as well, the Gov­ern­ment and the Cen­tral Bank un­der­took a process of prod­ding and pok­ing Cli­co as it sought to come to ac­count­ing, fi­nan­cial, le­gal and ac­tu­ar­i­al terms with the be­he­moth that had be­come a vir­tu­al ward of the State. The first at­tempt by the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion to im­ple­ment a long-term so­lu­tion for the pol­i­cy­hold­ers was re­ject­ed by many as not be­ing gen­er­ous enough as it in­volved the ces­sa­tion of the in­ter­est pay­ments that many of the in­vestors used to sup­ple­ment their pen­sions and is­su­ing them with 20-year, ze­ro-coupon bonds for any out­stand­ing bal­ances over $75,000. Thank­ful­ly, the Sep­tem­ber 2010 pol­i­cy was re­placed with some new think­ing which com­bined cash pay­ments of $75,000, the is­suance of ten, ze­ro-coupon bonds, which can be cashed for 80 cents on the dol­lar, and the con­ver­sion of ten ze­ro-coupon bonds in­to com­men­su­rate own­er­ship of an in­vest­ment hold­ing com­pa­ny.

In a state­ment is­sued on Jan­u­ary 16, Gov­ern­ment an­nounced that it had paid out about TT$1.1 bil­lion in pay­ments to CLI­CO and BAT Ex­ec­u­tive Flex­i­ble Pre­mi­um an­nu­ity (EF­PA) 2,177 con­tract own­ers with con­tracts val­ued at $75,000 or more, to per­sons. The ma­jor­i­ty of the pol­i­cy­hold­ers are much hap­pi­er with the Gov­ern­ment's sec­ond at­tempt to rem­e­dy their sit­u­a­tion than its first. But while much of the at­ten­tion in the last three years has been fo­cused on the plight of the pol­i­cy­hold­ers, there are some is­sues that the Gov­ern­ment now needs to ad­dress. The main is­sue is how does the Gov­ern­ment plan to re­cov­er the $5 bil­lion placed in­to Cli­co and the $2.3 bil­lion in­to CIB and whether the as­sets that CL Fi­nan­cial con­trols would be enough to en­sure that the State re­cov­ers a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of the monies owed. The sec­ond query, which is very much re­lat­ed to the first, is the sta­tus of the share­hold­ers' agree­ment signed in June 2009, which is due to ex­pire in five months. The third is­sue con­cerns the long-term fu­ture of Cli­co and British Amer­i­can, in the con­text of the like­li­hood that they will re­vert to own­er­ship by the CL Fi­nan­cial share­hold­ers-chief among whom is its for­mer chair­man Lawrence Duprey. As the Gov­ern­ment gets past the bu­reau­cra­cy in­volved in mak­ing pay­ments to the long-suf­fer­ing in­vestors, it would be ap­pro­pri­ate for it to turn its at­ten­tion to these three is­sues.