The new TCL board met for the first time last night fol­low­ing the spe­cial (com­pul­so­ry) meet­ing at the Radis­son Ho­tel.The board elect­ed Wil­fred Es­pinet–who ini­ti­at­ed the move to change the TCL board–as its new chair­man.In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian fol­low­ing the board meet­ing, Es­pinet said it was the board's in­ten­tion to sus­pend Bertrand as CEO, pend­ing an as­sess­ment of his per­for­mance.

Bertrand was one of the six di­rec­tors who re­signed from the board yes­ter­day, but he chose not to re­sign im­me­di­ate­ly as the CEO of the com­pa­ny.Es­pinet said the first or­der of busi­ness for the new board was to con­duct a fi­nan­cial and op­er­a­tional as­sess­ment of the ce­ment pro­duc­er and de­vel­op a plan for its fu­ture. He ex­pect­ed that this would be done with­in 90 days.

On the is­sue of the $100 mil­lion that TCL owes its T&T em­ploy­ees, rep­re­sent­ing the back­pay for the pe­ri­od 2009 to 2011, Es­pinet said the board would on­ly be in a po­si­tion to de­cide on that mat­ter when it has a firmer grasp on the com­pa­ny's fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion.Asked about a pos­si­ble re­struc­tur­ing of TCL's $2 bil­lion in debts, Es­pinet said: "There needs to be a plan for the com­pa­ny's fu­ture be­fore we can have a dis­cus­sion with our cred­i­tors about our debts."

He said the com­pa­ny would sched­ule an an­nu­al meet­ing as soon as pos­si­ble.The last an­nu­al meet­ing of the com­pa­ny was held in Oc­to­ber 2012. Last year's an­nu­al meet­ing was not held as share­hold­ers hold­ing 5.68 per cent filed for an in­junc­tion pre­vent­ing it, be­cause of the com­pa­ny's fail­ure to place the nom­i­na­tion of five new di­rec­tors on its man­age­ment proxy cir­cu­lar.