As B’dos saves, TT bites into investment opportunities

AS Barbadians accumulate more than BDS$2 billion in savings in financial institutions, Trinidadians are using their money to “buy up” businesses in Barbados. And John Bellamy, Chairman and Managing Director of A. S. Bryden & Sons, said the situation would not change unless Barbadians became more involved in the sale of shares in locally-listed companies. “For some reason, we have not been able to excite enough people in Barbados to get involved in buying shares in public companies and so there is very little activity on our stock exchange. There is just too much inactivity,” he lamented. Bellamy, whose company is now the take-over target of Trinidadian businessman Victor E. Mouttet, said the directorate of the 105-year-old company had bought the company breathing space through suspension of trading in its shares, while it came up with a response to the Trinidad challenge. Mouttet, a successful businessman, has reportedly made an offer to Sagicor for its 1.8 million shares in A. S. Bryden, calculated to be worth BDS$7.2 million if sold at the last trading rate. Bryden’s top executive said he was in the dark over how much Mouttet was willing to pay Sagicor for the stock, but management was concerned that the purchase of such a large bloc could give Mouttet an important springboard for eventual take-over. “There are some people in Trinidad with huge amounts of money and they certainly have the financial ability to buy anything. It appears they can virtually buy the Caribbean,” he said. “I think that it is unfortunate that we are so weak in being able to offset that type of approach,” Bellamy said.

At the same time, he said the suspension of trading in its shares only provided breathing space for the company to prepare a response and it was not a situation that could continue indefinitely. “We would not wish to have the suspension in trading of our shares remain for very long because it is not a good thing. However, the amount of trading in our shares over the past three years has been so miniscule that it really will not make a lot of difference. “The suspension of the shares was just to get a clear understanding of what the proposal was and to consider alternatives,” he disclosed.  The businessman insisted that he was not opposed to the present global business environment of mergers and acquisitions. “I do think, however, that it is particularly unfortunate if you have a company that used to be a privately-owned family business has actually progressed to being a truly public entity with wide-spread share holding, could then face a situation where it could be put back into private family ownership,” he maintained. According to Bellamy: “That sort of ownership structure is what we have worked very hard to overcome.” Mouttet runs several businesses in Trinidad, that are family-owned. Regarding the possibility of a change in ownership at A.S. Bryden & Sons, the managing director said the reaction of staff and management had been very negative to the idea. “They are very negative to that but if there is an opportunity to stop this thing from happening, I know they will be very heartened. The entire management and staff of the company are completely opposed to any type of take-over of this nature,” he pointed out. Total assets of A.S. Bryden stood at $116.5 million at the end of June 2003.