Massy Hold­ings’ pres­i­dent and CEO Ger­vase Warn­er opt­ed to pro­ceed on ear­ly re­tire­ment be­cause he felt his con­tin­ued pres­ence at the top of one of the coun­try’s largest com­pa­nies was cre­at­ing a dis­trac­tion, a source close to the com­pa­ny told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

Massy an­nounced in a news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ment yes­ter­day that Warn­er would re­tire from the com­pa­ny and its board on April 6, 2024, his 59th birth­day. Massy’s re­tire­ment age is 60. Warn­er is to be re­placed as pres­i­dent and CEO of Massy by David Af­fon­so, the ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the group’s in­te­grat­ed re­tail port­fo­lio.

Both Warn­er and Af­fon­so are 58 years old.

Warn­er’s ear­ly re­tire­ment from the com­pa­ny he has led for 14 years caused spec­u­la­tion about his mo­tives through­out the re­gion, from Ja­maica to Guyana.

“I have a sense that Mr Warn­er de­cid­ed to step aside to al­low the com­pa­ny to con­tin­ue to thrive with­out him, as he may have felt that his pres­ence may have been a dis­trac­tion,” said the source, who de­clined to be iden­ti­fied, be­cause of the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the is­sue.

Warn­er com­mu­ni­cat­ed his de­ci­sion to re­tire ear­ly at a Massy board meet­ing on Wednes­day, com­pa­ny sources con­firmed.

The source close to Massy said the “tremen­dous val­ue that Ger­vase Warn­er brought to the com­pa­ny over his tenure was recog­nised, in­clud­ing his role in fo­cus­ing the group on its three port­fo­lios and the dis­pos­al of non-core as­sets.”

As at Sep­tem­ber 30, 2023, Warn­er owned 24,994,769 Massy shares, which were worth $109.97 mil­lion yes­ter­day.

The news of Warn­er’s ear­ly re­tire­ment comes amid an in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­ing con­duct­ed by se­nior coun­sel Ker­wyn Gar­cia, in­to al­le­ga­tions made by Massy’s for­mer ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of busi­ness in­tegri­ty and group gen­er­al coun­sel, An­gelique Parisot-Pot­ter, at the group’s 100th an­nu­al meet­ing at Hilton Trinidad on De­cem­ber 18.

At the meet­ing Parisot-Pot­ter re­ferred to an ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship pro­gramme, com­pris­ing “bizarre rit­u­als” in­clud­ing that the con­sul­tants can train Massy em­ploy­ees to com­mu­ni­cate with the dead and that at­ten­dees can self heal with ‘white light en­er­gy’.

“This is a mat­ter of grave con­cern to share­hold­ers be­cause the cou­ple lead­ing this pro­gramme ap­pear to ex­ert dis­pro­por­tion­ate in­flu­ence over our ex­ec­u­tive team,” Parisot-Pot­ter told Massy share­hold­ers at the meet­ing.

Nei­ther Warn­er nor the com­pa­ny’s chair­man Robert Ri­ley re­spond­ed to the ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, Parisot-Pot­ter said: “The com­pa­ny would be aware that Warn­er is one of the named par­ties in my sub­mis­sion and that whether present or ab­sent, he has in­for­ma­tion that would be ma­te­r­i­al to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

“With re­gard to Mr Warn­er’s de­ci­sion to leave the com­pa­ny more than a year away from his sched­uled re­tire­ment date, that is a mat­ter that is up for pub­lic opin­ion,” she said.

She said while she agreed to be a par­ty to the Gar­cia in­ves­ti­ga­tion, she has not been ad­vised of the sta­tus of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“Giv­en the chair­man’s re­ply to my state­ment at the an­nu­al meet­ing on De­cem­ber 18, 2023, that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion had com­menced, and giv­en the state­ment by the com­pa­ny by way of let­ter to me a month lat­er on Jan­u­ary 18, 2024 ad­vis­ing that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion would take six weeks, I con­clud­ed that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion would have been com­plet­ed on or be­fore Jan­u­ary 29, 2024 be­ing six weeks from the date of the an­nu­al meet­ing and two months since the date I sub­mit­ted the memo.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, I have not as yet been ad­vised on the sta­tus of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. This is con­sis­tent with the lack of re­spect with which I have been treat­ed for the du­ra­tion of this en­tire mat­ter,” she said.