C&W kept afloat by C’bean cash cows

The country is among the top contributors to the worldwide profits of Cable & Wireless (C&W) at a time when the British operations of C&W are struggling financially.

C&W has a 49 percent stake in TSTT.

Describing Barbados as “very, very important to Cable & Wireless”, chief executive Harris Jones said the communications giant wanted to broaden market share here even further and improve customer service.

He said the C&W group had divided its operations into the British and International segments, the latter headed by Jones.

In an interview ,following three days of power talks in Barbados among operators in C&W International, Jones said half of C&W’s global profits were generated by Caribbean companies.

The official C&W Plc website revealed ?377 million (BDS$1,319.5 million) in group pre-tax profits for the financial year ending March 2005.

More important, Jones said, while international operations contributed 40 percent of overall revenue, they accounted for 100 percent of the group profits. “The Barbados market is very successful.

Barbados is our second-largest market in the Caribbean and certainly one of our best performing markets,” he said.

At the same time, Jones admitted that in contrast, the “UK business financially has been struggling for the past couple of years.” Meanwhile, the top executive dismissed suggestions that C&W was interested in relieving itself of any part of the Caribbean business.

He said, however, that expansion of share ownership in the Caribbean was not on the cards. President of C&W, Barbados, Donald Austin said there were already about 2,500 Barbadian shareholders in the company and they held about 19 percent of the stock in the local business.

According to Austin, about $70 million has been reinvested annually over the past three years in capital works and technology.