An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

An­gos­tu­ra di­rec­tor Jen­nifer Fred­er­ick sur­vived a heat­ed chal­lenge to her re-elec­tion as a di­rec­tor of the rum and bit­ters com­pa­ny yes­ter­day, with its 44th an­nu­al meet­ing ex­pos­ing a sharp di­vide be­tween mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ers and in­ter­ests con­trol­ling a large por­tion of the com­pa­ny’s vot­ing pow­er.

The fi­nal fig­ures showed 106.5 mil­lion votes in favour of Fred­er­ick re­tain­ing her di­rec­tor­ship and 85 mil­lion against her.

An­gos­tu­ra share­hold­er and mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­er ad­vo­cate Pe­ter Per­me­ll, one of Fred­er­ick’s most vo­cal crit­ics, ar­gued that the fig­ures did not re­flect the full ex­tent of mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­er op­po­si­tion be­cause of An­gos­tu­ra’s own­er­ship struc­ture.

“The out­come in terms of vot­ing, based on what the chair­man had in­di­cat­ed, is rough­ly 106.5 mil­lion votes in favour of Ms. Fred­er­ick and 85 mil­lion against Ms. Fred­er­ick,” Per­me­ll said.

“There­fore, be­cause of the short time, there wasn’t suf­fi­cient time to mo­bilise suf­fi­cient mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ers to bring out that 25 per cent of the vote,” Per­me­ll said.

More than 300 share­hold­ers at­tend­ed.

Se­nior Coun­sel Bernard Shep­pard, act­ing as a proxy for Rumpro Com­pa­ny, called for a bal­lot. De­spite ob­jec­tions from some share­hold­ers, the board agreed, and the vote was tak­en by bal­lot.

Per­me­ll ob­ject­ed to the bal­lot.

An­oth­er share­hold­er backed Per­me­ll’s po­si­tion, re­call­ing his ob­jec­tion to Fred­er­ick’s ap­point­ment a year ear­li­er.

“I share the sen­ti­ments of my col­league,” the share­hold­er said.

“We should not have reached here if floor mem­bers had done their home­work when I had made the re­quest for her not to be on the board,” he said.

The meet­ing be­came heat­ed at times with the An­gos­tu­ra chair­man Gary Hunt hav­ing to call for or­der.

“What is hap­pen­ing to­day is that Ms Fred­er­icks is ashamed to face this an­nu­al meet­ing,” Per­me­ll said.

Fred­er­ick then ad­dressed the meet­ing, re­ject­ing sug­ges­tions that she was con­nect­ed to the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing An­gos­tu­ra’s near­ly $984 mil­lion claim against CL Fi­nan­cial Lim­it­ed.

“I want to re­fute ab­solute­ly any sug­ges­tion that I was par­ty to any of the events which led to this par­tic­u­lar claim be­ing made by An­gos­tu­ra,” Fred­er­ick said.

She ex­plained that she joined CL Fi­nan­cial at the end of No­vem­ber 2009.

Fred­er­ick main­tained that her cor­po­rate re­spon­si­bil­i­ties would not pre­vent her from act­ing in An­gos­tu­ra’s best in­ter­ests.

“I am aware of my cor­po­rate du­ties, ful­ly com­pre­hen­sive over the sev­er­al years with my role as a di­rec­tor and my oblig­a­tions, and there is noth­ing that will de­ter me from act­ing in the best in­ter­est of An­gos­tu­ra in dis­charge of my du­ties,” Fred­er­ick said.

She cau­tioned share­hold­ers about the $984 mil­lion claim and its re­cov­ery.

The claim is be­fore the High Court in Claim No. CV2017-02536.

She point­ed to an­oth­er com­pa­ny with which she is as­so­ci­at­ed, where liq­ui­da­tion dis­tri­b­u­tions had reached on­ly six cents for every dol­lar.

“I ad­vise An­gos­tu­ra’s man­age­ment to do the nec­es­sary kind of com­pu­ta­tion based on the re­ports of the liq­uida­tor to the court and gazzetted in­for­ma­tion to give the share­hold­ers a re­al­is­tic view as to what is re­cov­er­able from liq­ui­da­tion and not un­in­formed fig­ures pre­sent­ed to the pub­lic,” Fred­er­ick said.

Hunt in the meet­ing said the court hear­ing comes up on Sep­tem­ber 29, 2026.

Fred­er­ick’s nom­i­na­tion came through Rumpro Com­pa­ny, whose share­hold­er com­mu­ni­ca­tions have been iden­ti­fied as ul­ti­mate­ly con­trolled by CL Fi­nan­cial, which it­self is con­trolled by liq­uida­tors..

CL Fi­nan­cial’s ul­ti­mate in­ter­est through Rumpro is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 44.97 per cent, while whol­ly state-owned Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund Hold­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed owns ap­prox­i­mate­ly 29.97 per cent.

To­geth­er, those in­ter­ests ac­count for al­most 75 per cent of An­gos­tu­ra’s is­sued shares.

That struc­ture was cen­tral to Per­me­ll’s ar­gu­ment that Fred­er­ick would re­tain her seat de­spite the op­po­si­tion ex­pressed at the meet­ing.

“But all isn’t lost. The mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ers are go­ing to re­group, and we’ll come up with an­oth­er strat­e­gy to see how best we can get rid of Ms. Fred­er­ick at a fu­ture point in time,” Per­me­ll stressed.