The Cli­co Pol­i­cy­hold­ers Group (CPG) gave the thumbs-down yes­ter­day to an at­tempt by William Mc­Connell, for­mer man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the Ja­maica con­glom­er­ate Las­celles de Mer­car­do, to take con­trol of the group. In a state­ment signed by its chair­man, Pe­ter Per­me­ll, CPG says that it had care­ful­ly re­viewed the takeover of­fer doc­u­ments re­leased on Fri­day by Mc­Connell through his spe­cial pur­pose ve­hi­cle, Black Sand Ac­qui­si­tion. Giv­en the re­view, CPG said that it "can­not sup­port what ap­pears to be a cal­cu­lat­ed and over­ly am­bi­tious at­tempt by its for­mer man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, William Mc Con­nell, to snap up the shares of this valu­able CL Fi­nan­cial (CLF) sub­sidiary at knock­down/fire sale prices giv­en the very vul­ner­a­ble po­si­tion in which the par­ent com­pa­ny has found it­self."

The ac­tivist group said that "not on­ly would such sup­port be ill-ad­vised but it would be tan­ta­mount to shoot­ing one's self in the foot since, clear­ly, the end re­sult would be a sig­nif­i­cant loss on an im­por­tant as­set ear­marked by the Jan­u­ary, 2009 MOU and the June, 2009 CLF share­hold­ers' agree­ment to set­tle the li­a­bil­i­ties of CLI­CO and British Amer­i­can pol­i­cy hold­ers." The group called on the CL Fi­nan­cial board to sum­mar­i­ly re­ject the of­fer and ad­vise all Las­celles share­hold­ers ac­cord­ing­ly, pur­suant to their fidu­cia­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. The group claims that it does share the for­mer MD's frus­tra­tion and con­cerns re­gard­ing the han­dling of the de­ba­cle by the Gov­ern­ment to date, as re­flect­ed in the fol­low­ing ex­cerpt be­low tak­en from the of­fer doc­u­ment un­der the rubric "Rea­sons for the Of­fer" and is al­so call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress these is­sues as a mat­ter of ur­gency:

"...on Ju­ly 22, 2011, the High Court in Trinidad or­dered CLI­CO, a mem­ber of the CL Fi­nan­cial Group, to re­pay near­ly US$10 mil­lion to six pol­i­cy hold­ers who brought law suits against that com­pa­ny. Sim­i­lar suits by dis­sat­is­fied pol­i­cy hold­ers may fol­low. "The fact that the T&T Gov­ern­ment did not ful­ly bail out the CLI­CO pol­i­cy­hold­ers but has forced them to ac­cept pay­ment over a twen­ty year pe­ri­od al­so sug­gests that it is un­like­ly that it will pro­vide any fur­ther aid to CLI­CO or oth­er mem­bers of the CL Fi­nan­cial Group in re­la­tion to the debt pack­age as we be­lieve it would be dif­fi­cult to jus­ti­fy ask­ing pol­i­cy hold­ers to take a sub­stan­tial cut in pol­i­cy sums con­trac­tu­al­ly due whilst bail­ing out Lawrence Duprey and oth­er CL share hold­ers by pay­ing-off or oth­er­wise as­sist­ing CL Fi­nan­cial with its debts.

"In light of the above, Las­celles is the most ob­vi­ous source of as­sis­tance for the ail­ing CL Fi­nan­cial Group. The mas­sive div­i­dend pay­ment and the pos­si­ble sale of the Car­reras shares raise con­cerns as to the sus­tain­able per­for­mance of the com­pa­ny. "It begs the ques­tion: Can the cur­rent board re­sist the temp­ta­tion to act in the in­ter­est of the CL Fi­nan­cial Group or can they be trust­ed to act, as they should, in the wider in­ter­est of all Las­celles share hold­ers as a whole? Pre­vi­ous at­tempts by the CL board to cre­ate a charge over the as­sets of Las­celles, to no dis­cernible ben­e­fit of Las­celles or its mi­nor­i­ty share hold­ers, were al­so trou­bling."