Last Thurs­day morn­ing, short­ly af­ter my com­men­tary head­lined “Are T&T firms ex­posed to NCBFG?” was pub­lished in this space, an email was re­ceived from a read­er, which stat­ed as fol­lows:

“I read with in­ter­est your news­pa­per ar­ti­cle of the above sub­ject ti­tle. While the ar­ti­cle was filled with num­bers from fi­nan­cial doc­u­ments it showed very lit­tle analy­sis of those num­bers. I wait­ed in vain for con­clu­sions that should have been drawn from the num­bers.”

The read­er was cor­rect that the com­men­tary was full of num­bers from the 2023 an­nu­al re­port of the NCB Fi­nan­cial Group (NCBFG) and the T&T Com­pa­ny Reg­istry for a com­pa­ny called NCB Glob­al Hold­ings, which is a whol­ly owned sub­sidiary of NCBFG.

The main rea­son for the lack of analy­sis in last week’s com­men­tary was the lack of space; the col­umn out­lined facts re­lat­ed to loans in 2022 and 2023 from two T&T-reg­is­tered com­pa­nies, NCB Glob­al Hold­ings and First­Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al Bank (T&T) and a group of lenders. Out­lin­ing the facts re­lat­ing to the five loans ac­count­ed for all of the avail­able space.

The sec­ond rea­son for the cau­tion in last week’s piece is that it dealt with the suc­cess­ful ef­fort by NCBFG—the Ja­maican fi­nan­cial con­glom­er­ate, which is list­ed on the Ja­maican and T&T stock ex­changes—to raise close to US$170 mil­lion from the two afore­men­tioned T&T-reg­is­tered com­pa­nies.

Close to US$95 mil­lion of the US$170 mil­lion raised by NCBFG came from NCB Glob­al Hold­ings, in four un­se­cured loans. The fifth loan, which was se­cured, came from First­Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al Bank (T&T) and to­taled US$75 mil­lion

As any­one who fol­lows re­gion­al fi­nan­cial de­vel­op­ments knows, ear­li­er this month Guardian Me­dia Ltd came in­to pos­ses­sion of doc­u­ments writ­ten by Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd, serv­ing as trustees for a US$23 mil­lion note (bond) raised by a com­pa­ny called Port­land (Bar­ba­dos) Ltd.

Those doc­u­ments in­clud­ed a let­ter writ­ten by the gen­er­al man­ag­er of Re­pub­lic Wealth Man­age­ment on May 9, 2024, point­ing out that Port­land (Bar­ba­dos) Ltd had missed a bul­let pay­ment for the US$23 mil­lion bond on April 30, 2024. That May 9 let­ter, which was signed by Mr Lee-Chin, al­so stat­ed, as a fact, that Port­land (Bar­ba­dos) Ltd had not set­tled the bul­let pay­ment by the end of the sev­en-busi­ness-day grace pe­ri­od, which was May 9.

As a re­sult of Port­land (Bar­ba­dos) miss­ing the April 30 and May 9 dead­lines to re­pay the bond­hold­ers—who one as­sumes would have been pri­mar­i­ly T&T in­sti­tu­tions and high-net-worth in­di­vid­u­als—Re­pub­lic Bank in its May 9 let­ter used the word ‘de­fault,’ the phrase ‘event of de­fault’ or oth­er de­riv­a­tives of the word de­fault on six oc­ca­sions, as not­ed pre­vi­ous­ly in this space.

An ar­ti­cle re­flect­ing the Re­pub­lic Bank char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of the note was pub­lished in the Guardian on May 14, 2024. Al­though the May 9 let­ter from Re­pub­lic Bank was in Guardian Me­dia’s pos­ses­sion the fol­low­ing day, May 10, a de­ci­sion was tak­en to give Mr Lee-Chin the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­firm (or, by in­fer­ence, de­ny) that the sig­na­ture on that let­ter was his. The news­pa­per did not hear from Mr Lee-Chin on the is­sue of his sig­na­ture on the May 9 let­ter.

On the night of May 14, a Ja­maican on­line pub­li­ca­tion called Our To­day pub­lished a sto­ry which was head­lined “Lee-Chin’s Port­land was nev­er in de­fault on Tri­ni bond.”

In that sto­ry, the ad­min­is­tra­tor of the pub­li­ca­tion, Al Ed­wards, wrote:

“For the last week, spec­u­la­tion and sup­po­si­tion have sur­round­ed the Michael Lee-Chin in­vest­ment ve­hi­cle, Port­land (Bar­ba­dos) Ltd and it pur­port­ed­ly de­fault­ing on a US$23 mil­lion bond, of which Trinidad’s Re­pub­lic Bank is the trustee.

“A firestorm erupt­ed as a re­sult of an ar­ti­cle pub­lished by the Guardian news­pa­per, which is head­quar­tered in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cap­i­tal, Port-of-Spain.

“Now comes news from Re­pub­lic Bank that Port­land (Bar­ba­dos) was nev­er in tech­ni­cal de­fault and that the note­hold­ers re­pose the ul­ti­mate faith in Port­land and Michael Lee-Chin.

“In fact, Re­pub­lic Bank cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly re­futes that Port­land (Bar­ba­dos) was ever in de­fault and did not spec­i­fy how the Guardian’s re­porter could ar­rive at that con­clu­sion.”

Mr Ed­wards re­pro­duced the Tues­day May 14 let­ter from Re­pub­lic Bank, which stat­ed, “The note­hold­ers have not de­clared an event of de­fault and au­tho­rised en­force­ment ac­tion as pro­vid­ed for un­der the trust deed.”

It is nec­es­sary to point out that there is a dif­fer­ence be­tween bond­hold­ers de­clar­ing an event of de­fault and au­tho­ris­ing en­force­ment ac­tions and a trustee mak­ing the ob­ser­va­tion—as the trustee Re­pub­lic Bank did in its May 9 let­ter—that miss­ing the April 30, 2024 bul­let pay­ment con­sti­tut­ed a “de­fault” and fail­ure to pay the out­stand­ing amount by May 9, 2024, con­sti­tut­ed “an event of de­fault.”

In its May 14 let­ter, Re­pub­lic Bank did NOT ad­dress the is­sue of tech­ni­cal de­fault and cer­tain­ly did not state, in­di­cate or in­fer that “the note­hold­ers re­pose the ul­ti­mate faith in Port­land and Michael Lee-Chin.”

It is un­ex­pect­ed that a jour­nal­ist, as ex­pe­ri­enced as Mr Ed­wards is, did not take the time to read and un­der­stand Re­pub­lic Bank’s May 14 let­ter.

The Our To­day sto­ry went on to re­port as fol­lows:

“Now Lee-Chin is con­sid­er­ing a mas­sive law­suit against the Guardian and its re­porter for the dam­age to rep­u­ta­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly at a sen­si­tive time when Port­land’s as­so­ciate com­pa­ny NCBFG is is­su­ing an APO (ad­di­tion­al pub­lic of­fer­ing) in ex­cess of J$5 bil­lion,” which is about US$32 mil­lion.

The sto­ry went on to quote Mr Lee-Chin di­rect­ly, “I ex­pect the Guardian to do the right thing and en­sure that my rep­u­ta­tion is re­stored to what it was be­fore...”

On Fri­day May 17, the Trinidad Ex­press, in a sto­ry by Joel Julien, its busi­ness ed­i­tor, pub­lished a sto­ry head­lined “Lee-Chin: Low­est form of jour­nal­ism.” In that piece, Mr Julien copied some of the sub­stance of the Our To­day ar­ti­cle, with­out at­tribut­ing the source:

“How­ev­er, a let­ter from Re­pub­lic dat­ed May 14 stat­ed that Port­land (Bar­ba­dos) was nev­er in tech­ni­cal de­fault and that the note­hold­ers re­posed faith in Port­land and Michael Lee-Chin. The Ex­press al­so re­pro­duced quotes from the Our To­day ar­ti­cle at­trib­uted to Mr Lee-Chin that re­ferred to the Guardian and my­self in neg­a­tive­ly.

What saves the Trinidad Ex­press re­port, some­what, is that they called and asked me for a re­sponse, which I pro­vid­ed. My re­sponse was that the Guardian’s May 14 ar­ti­cle was based on Re­pub­lic Bank’s May 9 let­ter, which has not been chal­lenged in any way.

There are two up­dates on this is­sue:

1) The clo­sure of the NCBFG APO, which was de­scribed as com­ing at a sen­si­tive time by Our To­day, has been pushed back by one week from last Mon­day to Mon­day com­ing;

2) The pay­ment plan arrange­ment, which was put in place by Re­pub­lic Bank and out­lined in its May 9 let­ter, re­quired a pay­ment of US$4 mil­lion by Port­land (Bar­ba­dos) to the trustee yes­ter­day. That US$4 mil­lion, along with US$4 mil­lion be­ing held by the trustee as col­lat­er­al, is due to be paid to the note­hold­ers as the first of three pay­ments in the three-month re­pay­ment plan.