Corporate moves good for region

Even as some Caricom politicians continue to drag their proverbial feet on the issue of closer association, Caribbean corporate majors are acquiring sizeable shareholdings in companies throughout the Region, and injecting capital as well as management skills to make them stronger, increase employment in their home countries as well as add to State revenues. In turn, the availability of and ready access to cross listing on the Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados stock exchanges have facilitated the process in which small, medium and large investors throughout the Caribbean can contribute to the development of States in the Region, some of which many of them may have never seen.  And they can achieve this, for example, by investing in some of the Caribbean business majors and with it have a financial stake in several regional associated companies or wholly-owned subsidiaries.

So that someone investing in RBTT Financial Holdings automatically has an interest in subsidiaries in St Lucia, Suriname, Jamaica, Aruba, Curacao, St Kitts and Nevis, Grenada and St Vincent and the Grenadines.  Almost the same will apply to investors in Jamaica headquartered Grace, Kennedy and Company Limited; the Barbados headquartered Cave Shepherd, Goddard Enterprises Limited, Barbados Shipping and Trading; and the Trinidad and Tobago headquartered Guardian Holdings, RBTT Financial Holdings and Republic Bank Limited. What all of these corporate houses and/or financial institutions have in common is that while each may be headquartered in one or other of the three countries named, nonetheless they are, all of them, Caribbean companies.

What this means, in addition to an unconscious deepening of regional ties, is a shift from wholly and at the same time impersonal North-South investment, a feature of the Region’s colonial heritage, to South-South investment. This means that Caricom people can and are using their savings in the development of the economies of the Region, even as they, understandably, enjoy the benefits of “not-to-be sneezed at” dividends. Only last week, Chairman of Republic Bank Limited, Ronald Harford, announced that a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Trinidad and Tobago headquartered bank - Barbados National Bank Inc Group (BNB) - had declared a Bds$34.7 million after tax profit for the financial year 2003-2004, a 44 percent increase over the annualised profit figure for the previous year of Bds$24.1 million.

This has meant both an increase in dividends to Republic’s shareholders and a substantial increase in corporation tax to Barbados. Meanwhile, because of the facility of cross listing in the “Big Three” as well as Central Securities  Depositories in Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and the Eastern Caribbean, not only Trinidad and Tobago shareholders, but shareholders throughout the Region, will be beneficiaries of BNB’s strengthened financial showing. A quiet revolution is taking place in which the private sector, embracing not only corporate houses but tens of thousands of crucial small, medium and large investors, is in essence federating the Region, even as a few of the area’s politicians are set on frustrating the establishment of the Caribbean Single Market and Economy and with it the dream of closer association.