(Trinidad Express) Govern-ment has taken full control of cash-strapped CL Financial and replaced its beleaguered chairman, Lawrence Duprey, from the helm of the insurance and real estate conglomerate.
Duprey, 74, who transformed CL Financial from a small Port of Spain insurance group to a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate that owned 65 companies in 34 countries, has also called it a day at a number of other CL Financial boards he chaired.
These include the boards of local rum producer Angostura Ltd, foreign spirits companies Burn Stewart Distillers and Lascelles de Mercado, as well as real estate company Home Construction Ltd and energy company Methanol Holdings Ltd.
Acting Finance Minister Conrad Enill signed an agreement yesterday with CL Financial shareholders and directors, to direct CL Financial’s economic recovery and a billion-dollar financial rescue of the group.
The new agreement, which gives substance to the January 30 Memorandum of Under-standing signed by Duprey and Finance Minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira, also installed a new board of directors led by former Central Bank Governor Dr Euric Bobb.
Government has three more directors while CL Financial will have three on the new board.
The other Government appointees are WASA chairman Shafeek Sultan Khan, Citibank managing director Steve Bideshi and permanent secretary in the Ministry of Finance Alison Lewis.
CL Financial directors are British Queen’s Counsel Andrew Mitchell, Diego Martin Regional Corporation chairman Steve Castagne and CL Financial’s group finance director Michael Carballo.
Shareholders representing more than 67 per cent of CL Financial indicated their support of the appointment of the new directors, a statement from the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
CL Financial has convened an extraordinary general meeting on June 30 at the Queen’s Park Oval to approve the decision to make these appointments.
Duprey, who lives in Florida, United States, will return to Trinidad and Tobago for the meeting, Carballo told the Express by phone yesterday. He said Duprey officially retired from the various CL Financial companies and its subsidiary boards yesterday, but would retain his significant shareholding in the group he built.
Carballo noted that the new agreement ensured there would be no fire sale of CL’s assets, which include a majority stake in Republic Bank and methanol and ammonia companies.
“Right now there are people knocking on the doors of Government and CL Financial, but there will be no fire sale and no assets will be undervalued,” he told the Express.
The new agreement has been hammered out to ensure the “correction of the financial conditions” of CL subsidiaries CLICO, British American Insurance Com-pany and CLICO Investment Bank, the Ministry of Finance said. These companies owe hundreds of millions of dollars to depositors, creditors and insurance and pension plan holders.
The new board will also ensure that CL Financial debts are managed and help the group repay the money spent by Government to keep it afloat.
