Guardian Hold­ings Lim­it­ed (GHL) record­ed prof­it at­trib­ut­able to eq­ui­ty share­hold­ers of $260 mil­lion for the nine months end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30. This was an in­crease of $49 mil­lion or 23 per cent over the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year.

The group's lat­est con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments, which were post­ed on the T&T Stock Ex­change, show that net in­come from in­vest­ing ac­tiv­i­ties in­creased by $242 mil­lion, from $489 mil­lion in 2015, to $731 mil­lion, in­clud­ing favourable fair val­ue move­ments of $139 mil­lion.

In his state­ment to share­hold­ers, chair­man Hen­ry Pe­ter Gan­teaume said: "As in­ter­est rates de­clined over the past few years, we de­lib­er­ate­ly built up a con­sid­er­able cash port­fo­lio so as to avoid com­mit­ting to low yield­ing in­stru­ments in­to the long term. "It is there­fore note­wor­thy that we ex­pe­ri­enced in­creas­es in in­come from all ma­jor in­vest­ment class­es, as we are be­gin­ning to de­rive the ben­e­fits of re­de­ploy­ing this stock of low yield­ing cash re­sources in­to sta­ble, high­er-yield­ing long-term in­stru­ments."

Gan­teaume said in the af­ter­math of Hur­ri­cane Matthew the group has been been no­ti­fied of claims but is yet to quan­ti­fy GHL's ex­po­sure, which will be ac­count­ed for in the fourth quar­ter of the year.