CLF shareholders to Gov’t: Do not liquidate instead negotiate

This was the message coming from the floor and presenters at a CL Financial/Clico symposium held yesterday at St Mary’s College Centenary Hall, Port of Spain. At one stage, there was cross talk between persons with differing views that interrupted the forum.

Senior Counsel Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, who is representing a group of shareholders, presented an overview of Government’s petition to wind up CL Financial, claiming insolvency, to recover billions of dollars owed to taxpayers from the 2009 financial bailout, and the appeal by Government on the judge’s dismissal of an application for a provisional liquidator.

If the appeal, which is due to be heard tomorrow morning, is deemed urgent, he said, “from the moment that decision is made, it could have disastrous effects on the assets of the company.” If it is not deemed to be urgent, that will be the end of the liquidator, he said.

CL Financial shareholders are also due to meet later in the day to select two directors who would then outnumber the government directors. CL Financial has been under Government control since 2009 until recently when Government and the shareholders agreement was not renewed.

Maharaj said he does not know on what basis Government has filed the appeal because CL Financial has already paid $7 billion debts and has shown that it can pay its debts.

He said that both auditing firms PricewaterhouseCooper and Enrst and Young have advised against liquidation.

Describing Government’s opposition to attorney at law John Jeremie representing shareholders as “dictatorial”, he said, “the Government controlled board is not resisting the petition. Government companies are now calling in debts that are owed to trigger insolvency, and you have a situation where the Government does not want the shareholders in the court to put forward the views of the shareholders.” He could not understand, he said, why Government was holding on to CL Fanancial, when similar conglomerates which were folding in the US and the United Kingdom at about the same time, and were bailed out by their governments, have long since been handed back to their original companies.

In his presentation Clico Stakeholders Alliance David Walker said that when in 2009 he spoke against the set of agreements which have “led us to this position” there was no response from the authorities.

The agreement putting us in this “bad position”, he said, “was not something that happened. It was designed.” As a nation of laws, he said, to not to give owners access to their company would be a travesty of justice.

While liquidation will put policy holders, especially those in the Eastern Caribbean at a disadvantaged because they have not been compensated, Walker said, the only option is to return CL Financial to its shareholders who have been promising to pay all their debts.

Grenada’s Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago Dr Patrick Antoine in his contribution said that 90 percent of policy holders in Grenada have not had “a single cent” from the bail out.

The current debate on whether the company should be returned to Lawrence Duprey and his cohorts, Walker said, is grounded on a misunderstanding of the facts.