Elec­tri­cal In­dus­tries Ltd (EIL), the largest man­u­fac­tur­er of elec­tri­cal ca­bles in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean, in Feb­ru­ary closed a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar deal to buy out the Michael Jay Williams' fam­i­ly-owned Cen­tu­ry Es­lon Ltd. Williams, the 82-year-old ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er at Cen­tu­ry Es­lon, who start­ed the com­pa­ny 45 years ago, on Mon­day con­firmed that the Dave Ramkissoon-owned EIL ac­quired the PVC man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny based at Trinci­ty. Williams did not dis­close the cost of the deal, say­ing on­ly that both sides had agreed not to di­vulge too much in­for­ma­tion about the trans­ac­tion.

How­ev­er, the Busi­ness Guardian un­der­stands that the deal was fi­nalised on Feb­ru­ary 18 at the law of­fices of Fitzwilliam, Stone, Fur­ness-Smith and Mor­gan on Sackville Street, Port-of-Spain, for $160 mil­lion, and that the sell­er re­ceived sig­nif­i­cant fi­nanc­ing from Sco­tia­bank. "They took over the share­hold­ing of the par­ent com­pa­ny, Cen­tu­ry Es­lon Trinidad," Williams said. The ac­qui­si­tion in­cludes Cen­tu­ry Es­lon's op­er­a­tions in Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica-which is its biggest mar­ket-St Lu­cia, Grena­da, An­tigua, St Kitts and St Vin­cent. Ramkissoon, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of EIL, was on Mon­day un­avail­able for a com­ment on the buy­out and where the com­pa­ny fits in EIL's op­er­a­tions. De­nesh Abra­ham, group strat­e­gy man­ag­er, said all ques­tions about the trans­ac­tion should be di­rect­ed to Hay­den Kublals­ingh, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, who was out of the coun­try. EIL, which "turned around" its busi­ness mode and con­cen­trat­ed on de­vel­op­ing its em­ploy­ees rather than fo­cus­ing on its cus­tomers, won the Ex­cel­lence in Busi­ness 2006 Award for the sec­ond time. The com­pa­ny first won the award or­gan­ised by the Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny and Re­pub­lic Bank in 2004.

Among EIL's 19 ex­port mar­kets in­clude Guyana, Ja­maica, Be­lize, Suri­name and the Unit­ed States.

Cen­tu­ry Es­lon, which sits on eight acres at Cen­tu­ry Dri­ve, Trinci­ty, makes pipe fit­tings, paint buck­ets for five lo­cal paint com­pa­nies, elec­tri­cal con­duits and wa­ter tanks. Williams, a long­stand­ing busi­ness­man and for­mer pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate, said the prin­ci­pals at EIL made a "neb­u­lous sort of ap­proach" for a buy­out to the man­age­ment at Cen­tu­ry Es­lon more than five years ago, but it was "not pur­sued or tak­en very se­ri­ous­ly." EIL re­newed that of­fer about 14 months ago. "EIL was chat­ting. At first, we said we weren't up for sale, but if there's an of­fer on the ta­ble, we'd con­sid­er it. They want­ed cer­tain in­for­ma­tion, which we gave with some hes­i­ta­tion. When they ap­peared se­ri­ous, we gave more da­ta and, even­tu­al­ly, we came up with a fig­ure. We have an agree­ment not to dis­cuss too much of the de­tails. "These things take a cer­tain pro­ce­dure. The buy­ers went through a due dili­gence in­ves­ti­ga­tion to sat­is­fy them­selves be­fore fi­nal­is­ing the deal. There was an agree­ment to buy in late No­vem­ber and we con­clud­ed on Feb­ru­ary 18," Williams said.

Williams, who was the com­pa­ny's man­ag­ing di­rec­tor from its in­cep­tion, said the com­pa­ny was orig­i­nal­ly lo­cat­ed in 6,000 square feet of build­ing space in Pasea, Tu­na­puna. He said that apart from man­u­fac­tur­ing pipe fit­tings, the com­pa­ny al­so made Chief floor pol­ish, a prod­uct which was heav­i­ly in­vest­ed in by LJ Williams Ltd, start­ed by Williams's fa­ther, Louis Jay Williams. "We had con­nec­tions all over the world-Japan, Aus­tralia. The floor pol­ish was from Aus­tralia. LJ Williams was and still is a mar­ket­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion. "At that time, 40, 50 years ago, there was a move­ment to in­dus­tri­alise the coun­try. What­ev­er led it­self to lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing, we looked in­to it and ex­plored man­u­fac­tur­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties," Williams said. The com­pa­ny moved to Trinci­ty in 1970. Twen­ty-five years ago, Cen­tu­ry Es­lon ex­pand­ed in the Caribbean, first­ly by ac­quir­ing the Bar­ba­dos-based and Unit­ed King­dom-owned com­pa­ny, In­ter­na­tion­al Plas­tics Ltd. Ja­maica be­came a ware­hous­ing op­er­a­tion, as did many of the oth­er re­gion­al coun­tries.

The com­pa­ny, which orig­i­nal­ly had Japan­ese part­ners, Sek­isui Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny Ltd, in 1948 start­ed the plas­tic au­to­mat­ic in­jec­tion mold­ing busi­ness in Japan. In 1956, In 1956, Sek­isui de­vel­oped Japan's first plas­tic rain gut­ters, call­ing it Es­lon Rain Gut­ters. "Their trade­mark was Es­lon; you had ray­on, ny­lon and es­lon. It was S-Lon, but they an­gli­cised it to mar­ket it. Williams was asked why he'd de­cid­ed to sell the com­pa­ny he'd start­ed, giv­en that he has 11 chil­dren-five sons and six daugh­ters, all "with one wife"-even though sons Ger­ard and David were in­volved in the busi­ness. Williams him­self comes from a big fam­i­ly, be­ing the fourth of ten chil­dren, with all but one, Ron­nie Williams, still be­ing alive. "The op­por­tu­ni­ties these days are very wide. Chil­dren go in dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions, quite un­re­lat­ed to busi­ness. Un­like av­enues open to chil­dren 40 years ago, nowa­days, if they tell you what they are do­ing, you won­der what it is," Williams said. Williams said part­ing with the com­pa­ny was not dif­fi­cult. "There was no sen­ti­men­tal at­tach­ment. We had a good team of peo­ple."