The re­con­fig­ured board of Clax­ton Bay-based ce­ment pro­duc­er TCL yes­ter­day ap­point­ed an act­ing CEO to lead the com­pa­ny, fol­low­ing Tues­day night's de­liv­ery of a let­ter of sus­pen­sion to the sub­stan­tive group CEO, Rollin Bertrand.The new act­ing CEO is Ce­mex ex­ec­u­tive Ale­jan­dro Ramirez, who has been a TCL di­rec­tor since his elec­tion to the board at the com­pa­ny's last an­nu­al meet­ing on Oc­to­ber 12, 2012.

Ramirez re­placed Luis Can­tu who served as the Ce­mex rep­re­sen­ta­tive on the TCL board for two years.Bertrand was one of six TCL di­rec­tors who ten­dered their res­ig­na­tions with­in hours of the com­pa­ny los­ing an ap­pli­ca­tion to the lo­cal Court of Ap­peal for an in­junc­tion that would have stopped the spe­cial com­pul­so­ry meet­ing by share­hold­ers on Tues­day.The res­ig­na­tion of the TCL di­rec­tors meant that there was no need for Tues­day's meet­ing to vote on their re­moval.

The on­ly agen­da item at the meet­ing was the elec­tion of sev­en new di­rec­tors: Wil­fred Es­pinet, Al­i­son Lewis, Chris Dehring, Glenn Hamel-Smith, Nigel Ed­wards, Car­los Palero and Fran­cis­co Aguil­era. All sev­en were elect­ed unan­i­mous­ly with votes and prox­ies amount­ing to 83.33 per cent of TCL's to­tal shares.On Tues­day night, com­ing out of the new board's first meet­ing, TCL wrote to Bertrand in­form­ing him that he was sus­pend­ed and that his per­for­mance would be re­viewed in a process that was not ex­pect­ed to take more than 30 days.

The board yes­ter­day es­tab­lished a three-mem­ber com­mit­tee to re­view Bertrand's per­for­mance. The board al­so ap­point­ed com­mit­tees to re­view pro­pos­als that it has re­ceived to con­duct fi­nan­cial and op­er­a­tional as­sess­ments of the com­pa­ny's po­si­tion.Out of those fi­nan­cial and op­er­a­tional as­sess­ments, the board ex­pects to gen­er­ate a plan for its fu­ture with­in 90 days.

Sev­er­al mem­bers of the new TCL board trav­elled to Clax­ton Bay yes­ter­day to meet with se­nior ex­ec­u­tives of the com­pa­ny's Trinidad op­er­a­tions and they al­so spoke with ex­ec­u­tives at TCL sub­sidiaries in Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica by tele­con­fer­ence.Speak­ing yes­ter­day, TCL chair­man Wil­fred Es­pinet said the new board's main pri­or­i­ty at this point was to en­sure that the op­er­a­tions at its fa­cil­i­ties through­out the re­gion con­tin­ued to op­er­ate.

About Ramirez

Ale­jan­dro Ramirez is coun­try di­rec­tor of CE­MEX Puer­to Ri­co.He was ap­point­ed to the po­si­tion in April 2011 and un­der his di­rec­tor­ship, the com­pa­ny has at­tained marked im­prove­ments in its op­er­a­tions.Since Oc­to­ber 2012, CE­MEX busi­ness units in Pe­ru and Ar­genti­na al­so re­port to him.

Ramirez joined CE­MEX in Ju­ly 2000 and has held po­si­tions in var­i­ous ar­eas in­clud­ing Strate­gic Plan­ning Di­rec­tor and Projects Di­rec­tor at CE­MEX Cen­tral, Plan­ning Vice Pres­i­dent of the Philip­pines and Asia, Coun­try Man­ag­er (Thai­land), Vice Pres­i­dent of Plan­ning (Venezuela), Vice Pres­i­dent of Strate­gic Projects (South Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean), and Di­rec­tor of Cor­po­rate Af­fairs (Amer­i­c­as).

Ramirez has ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence in man­age­ment of busi­ness units as well as de­vel­op­ment and im­ple­men­ta­tion of op­er­a­tive and cor­po­rate strate­gies.He holds an MBA with a Ma­jor in Fi­nance from the Whar­ton School of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia and a BSc. in In­dus­tri­al and Sys­tems En­gi­neer­ing from the Mon­ter­rey In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, Mex­i­co. Source: TCL's Web site