Guardian Hold­ings Lim­it­ed (GHL) share­hold­ers unan­i­mous­ly ap­proved the in­vest­ment of US$75mil­lion a trans­ac­tion is pleased to an­nounce that the fi­nal step to clos­ing the pro­posed by the In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nance Cor­po­ra­tion in­to the eq­ui­ty of GHL at an ex­tra-or­di­nary meet­ing on Sep­tem­ber 1. IFC's pur­chase of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12.8 per cent of Com­pa­ny shares at TT$16 per share, which rep­re­sents a 22 per cent pre­mi­um to the share price's 90 day mov­ing av­er­age price, means GHL will ben­e­fit from an in­jec­tion of cap­i­tal that will im­prove cash flow, ex­pand its cap­i­tal base, and re­duce its debt oblig­a­tions. Chair­man Arthur Lok Jack, in a GHL state­ment, ex­pressed con­fi­dence that this trans­ac­tion will ben­e­fit not on­ly the GHL Group, its share­hold­ers and oth­er ex­ter­nal stake­hold­ers, but al­so the wider com­mu­ni­ty.

GHL group CEO Jeff Mack iden­ti­fied sev­er­al ben­e­fits of the in­vest­ment to the share­hold­ers at the meet­ing. "It in­creas­es fi­nan­cial flex­i­bil­i­ty, im­proves cash flow by elim­i­nat­ing high­er debt ser­vice cost, low­ers the com­pa­ny's lever­age ra­tio, while pro­vid­ing ad­di­tion­al cap­i­tal in sup­port of GHL's strate­gic growth plans. "At the same time, the trans­ac­tion brings in a strong, rep­utable part­ner who has the funds avail­able for fol­low-on in­vest­ments. James Scriv­en, IFC Di­rec­tor of Fi­nan­cial Mar­kets, said: "This in­vest­ment aligns with our pri­or­i­ties for the re­gion by deep­en­ing the fi­nan­cial sec­tor and im­prov­ing ac­cess to ser­vices for seg­ments not cur­rent­ly served by in­sur­ance com­pa­nies, while strength­en­ing our part­ner­ship with a strong

lo­cal play­er, help­ing it grow and ex­pand in­to new mar­kets."

Su­joy Bose, Head of IFC ALAC Fund, added: "IFC ALAC Fund is pleased to part­ner with Guardian Hold­ings Lim­it­ed, a leader in the Caribbean in­sur­ance sec­tor, where mar­ket pen­e­tra­tion is low com­pared to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards. This in­fu­sion of cap­i­tal will al­low the com­pa­ny to ex­pand its in­sur­ance ser­vices in this un­der­served mar­ket." IFC, a mem­ber of the World Bank Group, is the largest glob­al de­vel­op­ment in­sti­tu­tion fo­cused on the pri­vate sec­tor in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries. It pro­vides fi­nanc­ing to help busi­ness­es em­ploy more peo­ple and sup­ply es­sen­tial ser­vices, by mo­bi­liz­ing cap­i­tal from oth­ers, and by de­liv­er­ing ad­vi­so­ry ser­vices to en­sure sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment. cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple to es­cape pover­ty and im­prove their lives. IFC's new in­vest­ments climbed to a record $18 bil­lion in fis­cal 2010, ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the com­pa­ny.