Giv­en the ev­i­dence which has al­ready come to light dur­ing the on-go­ing Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to Cli­co/CL­Fi­nan­cial, it seems that with­out be­ing so pre­pos­ter­ous as to an­tic­i­pate the find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions of sole com­mis­sion­er Sir An­tho­ny Cole­man, cer­tain con­clu­sions are al­ready ap­par­ent and, in con­se­quence, it is not too ear­ly to be­gin giv­ing con­sid­er­a­tion to the pos­si­ble fu­ture of the con­glom­er­ate.

There ap­pears to be no doubt that, on the whole, the con­glom­er­ate did not pos­sess the type of cul­ture which is to be found in well-run busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tions. In­deed, this con­glom­er­ate of dis­parate un­re­lat­ed busi­ness­es was nei­ther prop­er­ly reg­u­lat­ed nor con­trolled, lacked gen­er­al­ly ac­cept­ed eth­i­cal stan­dards and best busi­ness prac­tices and worked, with­out due rea­son, for the un­de­serv­ing ben­e­fit of its prin­ci­pal "ac­tors" and with­out cog­ni­sance be­ing tak­en of the in­ter­ests of its in­vestors and, in­deed, of the gen­er­al pub­lic.

The di­rec­tors of the com­pa­nies of the con­glom­er­ate were se­lectees of the ex­ec­u­tive chair­man, most be­ing em­ploy­ees of the com­pa­nies of which they hap­pen to be di­rec­tors. It would not be sur­pris­ing, there­fore, that the di­rec­tors found them­selves ow­ing spe­cial al­legien­ce to the ex­ec­u­tive chair­man him­self. There was no gen­er­al out­side in­vestor share­hold­er rep­re­sen­ta­tion on the boards.

Na­tion­al laws which ought to have gov­erned the ac­tiv­i­ties of the con­glom­er­ate were, for the most part, ei­ther ig­nored or were not en­forced by the au­thor­i­ties re­spon­si­ble.Bil­lions of "tax­pay­ers' dol­lars" have been pumped in­to the con­glom­er­ate as a res­cue op­er­a­tion and, what­ev­er the con­tents of the MOU be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man, there can be no doubt that the pub­lic in­ter­est will not be served were the con­glom­er­ate to be re­turned to the hands of its for­mer con­trollers.

Notwith­stand­ing the al­most inate in­cli­na­tion of politi­cians to seek to ex­tend their pow­er in what­ev­er di­rec­tion, any ac­tion de­signed to con­tin­ue to main­tain pub­lic own­er­ship of the con­glom­er­ate longer than might be nec­es­sary, must be stren­u­ous­ly re­sist­ed.In­deed,the busi­ness­es con­pris­ing the con­glom­er­ate should re­main in the pri­vate sec­tor with two pro­vi­sos:

(a) the full sum of the tax­pay­ers' bailout dol­lars must be re­cov­ered for the Trea­sury; and

(b)fu­ture own­er­ship, through pub­lic share al­lo­ca­tions, must be wide and di­verse with max­i­mum share al­lo­ca­tions.

With item (b) in mind, the man­age­ment of the con­glom­er­ate should be ra­tio­nalised by, as far as pos­si­ble and de­sir­able, sub-di­vid­ing it in­to sep­a­rate "like" com­pa­nies. The task of the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment-ap­point­ed lead­er­ship should be to pro­vide a de­gree of sta­bil­i­ty so that con­fi­dence could be re­stored and even­tu­al­ly en­hanced, thus paving the way for even­tu­al di­vest­ment.

What is to be done in re­spect of com­pa­nies and es­tab­lish­ments which may have found them­selves in pri­vate hands through "un­usu­al" use of the re­sources of the con­glom­er­ate?Econ­o­mist Adam Smith in his Wealth of Na­tions made the fol­low­ing ob­ser­va­tion:"Peo­ple of the same trade sel­dom meet to­geth­er, even for mer­ri­ment and di­ver­sion, but the con­ver­sa­tion ends in a con­spir­a­cy to raise prices."

While we are not here speak­ing of prices, the ana­logue should be clear: should we not be won­der­ing whether there are not oth­er busi­ness­es of the same mould as Cli­co/CL­Fi­nan­cial op­er­at­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go? I hope not!

Er­rol Cu­pid,

Trinci­ty, Tacarigua.