Derek Achong

A group of Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ers has de­cid­ed to with­draw its year-old law­suit which served as the cat­a­lyst for the re­cent re­moval of man­age­ment at the Clax­ton Bay-based ce­ment pro­duc­er.The de­ci­sion au­to­mat­i­cal­ly dis­charges an in­junc­tion ob­tained by the group, which pre­vent­ed the fi­nan­cial­ly-trou­bled man­u­fac­tur­er from host­ing its an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing last year.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, new­ly-elect­ed TCL chair­man Wil­fred Es­pinet, who led the group of the share­hold­ers, con­firmed the com­pa­ny was plan­ning to hold the long over­due meet­ing in the next two months, in keep­ing with the 90-day dead­line set by the new board when it was elect­ed on Au­gust 19.

Es­pinet al­so said the elec­tion of him­self and fel­low board mem­bers would have to be rat­i­fied at the meet­ing, as on­ly 240 share­hold­ers, rep­re­sent­ing 72 per cent of shares in the com­pa­ny, were present at the spe­cial (com­pul­so­ry) meet­ing last month that led to the de­par­ture of the old board."Al­though it was by a ma­jor­i­ty and was not a ca­su­al thing, it will still have to be done by the full ro­ta­tion of share­hold­ers at the meet­ing," Es­pinet said in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

The group of 11 share­hold­ers, who to­geth­er hold a 5.68 per cent stake in TCL, ob­tained the in­junc­tion hours be­fore last year's meet­ing was sched­uled to be held.It was part of their sub­stan­tive law­suit chal­leng­ing a de­ci­sion by TCL di­rec­tors to refuse to at­tach the group's pro­pos­al and state­ment to the man­age­ment proxy cir­cu­lar which ac­com­pa­nied the no­tice of the meet­ing.

While the case was still pend­ing in court last month, the group sought to chal­lenge the for­mer board's man­age­ment by req­ui­si­tion­ing the spe­cial meet­ing.The board at­tempt­ed to block the move but were re­fused an in­junc­tion by both the High Court and Court of Ap­peal.But hours be­fore the meet­ing, six of the board mem­bers–chair­man Andy Bha­jan, CEO Rollin Bertrand, Car­los Hee Houng, Bevon Fran­cis, Leonard Nurse and Bri­an Young–re­signed.

They were re­placed by Es­pinet, re­tired pub­lic ser­vants Al­i­son Lewis, Ja­maican busi­ness ex­ec­u­tive Chris Dehring, at­tor­ney Glenn Hamel-Smith, UTC ex­ec­u­tive Nigel Ed­wards and Ce­mex ex­ec­u­tives Car­los Palero and Fran­cis­co Aguil­era, who joined Wayne Yip Choy, Ale­jan­dro Can­tu and Jean Michel Al­lard to form a ten-mem­ber board.Three of the ten TCL di­rec­tors are em­ploy­ees of Mex­i­can ce­ment gi­ant Ce­mex, which has a 20 per cent stake in the lo­cal ce­ment pro­duc­er.

Ad­dress­ing Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad in the Port-of-Spain High Court yes­ter­day, Es­pinet's lawyer Stu­art Young said his clients and the com­pa­ny had agreed to with­draw the law­suit by mu­tu­al con­sent.The com­pa­ny has been or­dered to pay the group's le­gal fees for ini­ti­at­ing the law­suit.