An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings, the CL Fi­nan­cial sub­sidiary, has de­clared a loss of $1.28 bil­lion for 2008 and is un­able to pro­duce its au­dit­ed re­sults for 2009.

While the com­pa­ny re­port­ed an unau­dit­ed net prof­it of $101.3 mil­lion for the first half of 2010, close to half of that is due to for­eign cur­ren­cy gains. The com­pa­ny sub­mit­ted its au­dit­ed re­sults for 2008–de­scribed by a stock mar­ket an­a­lyst as be­ing the largest loss in the his­to­ry of the T&T Stock Ex­change–and its unau­dit­ed re­sults for the first half of 2010 to the T&T Stock Ex­change af­ter 4 pm on Fri­day last. In re­port­ing its first fi­nan­cial re­sults of any kind since No­vem­ber 2008, An­gos­tu­ra stat­ed that its con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2008, were "ma­te­ri­al­ly im­pact­ed by post-year-end events in­volv­ing CL Fi­nan­cial."

The "pre­car­i­ous" fi­nan­cial po­si­tion of its par­ent "im­paired the col­lec­tabil­i­ty of cir­ca $1.185 bil­lion in re­ceiv­ables from the CL Fi­nan­cial Group," the com­pa­ny said. The rum and bit­ters pro­duc­er stat­ed in its re­port that recog­nis­ing these pro­vi­sions re­sult­ed in a net loss of $1.287 bil­lion as well as ac­cum­mu­lat­ed loss­es of $307 mil­lion and neg­a­tive share­hold­ers' eq­ui­ty of $121 mil­lion. The com­pa­ny re­port­ed that be­cause of its loss in 2008, it was not in a po­si­tion to de­clare any div­i­dends for that year. "These well doc­u­ment­ed fi­nan­cial chal­lenges which con­front­ed CL Fi­nan­cial placed An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings in an ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult po­si­tion," ac­cord­ing to the writ­ten re­port which ac­com­pa­nied the com­pa­ny's re­sults, which was signed by the vice chair­man of An­gos­tu­ra.

The com­pa­ny's ex­ter­nal au­di­tor, Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers (PwC), is­sued a dis­claimer of opin­ion in re­spect of An­gos­tu­ra's 2008 ac­counts. An au­di­tor at­tached to a lo­cal pri­vate firm ex­plained that a dis­claimer of opin­ion is where an au­di­tor is un­able, for a par­tic­u­lar rea­son, to ex­press an opin­ion on ac­counts. An­gos­tu­ra de­scribed PwC's de­ci­sion to is­sue the dis­claimer of opin­ion as "dis­ap­point­ing to the board," be­cause the dis­claimer was is­sued "on the sole ba­sis of in­suf­fi­cient fi­nan­cial records for one US-based sub­sidiary, name­ly An­gos­tu­ra Spir­its and Wine Inc (ASW), which, in man­age­ment's view, is not ma­te­r­i­al to the con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments tak­en as a whole." Ac­cord­ing to An­gos­tu­ra: "Our au­di­tors have been uan­ble to per­form suf­fi­cient au­dit work in re­spect of ASW to the ex­tent re­quired to pro­vide rea­son­able as­sur­ance that its fi­nan­cial im­pact was un­like­ly to be sig­nif­i­cant."

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Col­in Wharfe, PwC's lo­cal as­sur­ance leader, said: "We do not dis­cuss our client's busi­ness with any­one out­side the firm." Wharfe said An­gos­tu­ra's dis­claimer of opin­ion was the first time in his ex­pe­ri­ence and that au­dits are premised on ma­te­ri­al­i­ty. An­gos­tu­ra was sus­pend­ed from trad­ing on the lo­cal stock ex­change in Ju­ly 2009 be­cause of its fail­ure to pub­lish its 2008 re­sults. Last month, the T&T Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion fined the com­pa­ny $160,000 for late sub­mis­sion of ac­counts.