PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Stu­art Fran­co, the new­ly ap­point­ed chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer of Pro­duc­tive Busi­ness So­lu­tions (PBS)'s East­ern Caribbean Clus­ter, says the com­pa­ny's full ac­qui­si­tion of Trinidad Sys­tems Ltd (TSL) had more than a cash in­vest­ment be­hind it.

The Ja­maican com­pa­ny's ac­qui­si­tion of TSL was an­nounced on Sep­tem­ber 8. In an in­ter­view on Fri­day, Fran­co said the deal rep­re­sent­ed a strate­gic re­align­ment de­signed to dri­ve re­gion­al mar­ket ex­pan­sion and a nav­i­gate planned ex­ec­u­tive suc­ces­sion.

"What I would tell you is that the struc­ture wasn't on­ly about cash. The struc­ture had a lot more in­volved in it than cash. So when you go to look at it, you're not go­ing to tru­ly see all that's there. So there's a com­bi­na­tion of things that made it pos­si­ble," said Fran­co, who added that the deal would al­low TSL to mit­i­gate on­go­ing for­eign ex­change pres­sures, while al­so shar­ing re­sources where pos­si­ble to com­bat oth­er is­sues faced across the re­gion.

"I think the chal­lenges are the same for every­one, to be hon­est. And what we're see­ing, I'll name a few. So one is forex, which con­tin­ues to be a ma­jor chal­lenge here in Trinidad. But again, you have to you have to find ways to di­ver­si­fy. You have to find ways to ex­pand. And to be quite frank with you, that's an­oth­er rea­son for this move, We are now, as the TSL por­tion, go­ing to be able to of­fer our prod­ucts and ser­vices out­side. When we of­fer them out­side, we earn US dol­lars."

He con­tin­ued, "So it's one of the ways of us try­ing to solve that prob­lem. That's just one prob­lem in for­eign ex­change. The oth­er is­sues we see some economies hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty to grow, and we're see­ing some economies boom­ing like Guyana. So one of the nice things of hav­ing the breadth and the width across all the coun­tries is when one is down on its luck, one is go­ing to be up on its luck, and you want it to bal­ance it­self out."

Fran­co con­firmed that while he has a new role un­der the ac­qui­si­tion, TSL's lo­cal op­er­a­tions will large­ly re­main un­changed.