An­tho­ny Wil­son

On Thurs­day, the T&T Stock Ex­change (TTSE) post­ed on its web­site that Richard Young had re­signed as a di­rec­tor of One Caribbean Me­dia two days pre­vi­ous­ly "be­cause of a po­ten­tial con­flict of in­ter­est as an­oth­er com­pa­ny on whose board he serves will be en­ter­ing the mar­ket and be in di­rect com­pe­ti­tion with a sub­sidiary of the OCM Group."

The lan­guage in the state­ment from the TTSE sug­gests that Mr Young sat on two boards–OCM and an­oth­er un­named com­pa­ny–and the un­named com­pa­ny in­tends to en­ter a mar­ket that will bring it in­to di­rect com­pe­ti­tion with some­thing that OCM is do­ing al­ready or is about to start do­ing.

OCM is a re­gion­al me­dia hold­ing com­pa­ny that owns news­pa­pers, ra­dio sta­tions, tele­vi­sion broad­cast and pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ties, as well as a 51 per cent stake in Inno­gen Tech­nolo­gies Inc, a so­lar en­er­gy so­lu­tions com­pa­ny based in Bar­ba­dos.

As far as can be de­ter­mined, Mr Young serves as a di­rec­tor on the fol­low­ing boards: Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Board, Catholic Me­dia Ser­vices, Youth Busi­ness T&T, BDO Fi­nan­cial Ad­vi­so­ry, Sagi­cor Fi­nan­cial and the Massy Group. That in­for­ma­tion was culled from the 2013 an­nu­al re­ports of OCM and Massy Group

By a process of elim­i­na­tion, it seems ob­vi­ous that on­ly two of the boards on which Mr Young serves could be con­tem­plat­ing "en­ter­ing the mar­ket and be in di­rect com­pe­ti­tion with a sub­sidiary of the OCM group."Those two com­pa­nies are the Catholic Me­dia Ser­vices and the Massy Group, whose sub­sidiary, Massy Com­mu­ni­ca­tions "has built a next-gen­er­a­tion MPLS-based net­work and made sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ments in both sub­ma­rine and ter­res­tri­al fi­bre op­tic ca­pac­i­ty," ac­cord­ing to its web­site.

As the Catholic Me­dia Ser­vices is like­ly to be dis­qual­i­fied by virtue of its size and scope, the ques­tion is whether the Massy Group is "en­ter­ing the mar­ket and (would) be in di­rect com­pe­ti­tion with a sub­sidiary of the OCM group" in a ven­ture that lever­ages Massy's sig­nif­i­cant net­work and fi­bre op­tic ca­pac­i­ty.

There is lit­tle doubt that the Massy Group has the tech­ni­cal com­pe­tence, size and the fi­nan­cial mus­cle to un­der­take a new ven­ture that would be "in di­rect com­pe­ti­tion with a sub­sidiary of the OCM group," as the con­glom­er­ate re­cent­ly float­ed a $1.2 bil­lion bond on the lo­cal cap­i­tal mar­ket, of which $700 mil­lion has been as­signed to re­struc­ture its debt and $500 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed for new in­vest­ments.But is his ser­vice on the Massy board the rea­son why Mr Young re­signed from OCM?

Not ac­cord­ing to Ger­vase Warn­er, Massy's group CEO who said on Fri­day af­ter­noon: "I don't know why Mr Young re­signed from OCM. I am not aware of any con­flict of in­ter­est that Massy has with OCM."The oth­er in­ter­est­ing de­vel­op­ment that may (or may not) be re­lat­ed to Mr Young res­ig­na­tion is the fact that mo­bile op­er­a­tor Dig­i­cel ap­plied for a pay-tele­vi­sion li­cence, ac­cord­ing to a Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT) no­tice dat­ed Au­gust 18.

The Sun­day BG un­der­stands that Dig­i­cel may be look­ing to get in­volved in what is re­ferred to as IP-TV, which is the pro­vi­sion of tele­vi­sion ser­vices that are de­liv­ered us­ing an In­ter­net Pro­to­col suite over a pack­et-switched net­work in­stead of through tra­di­tion­al ter­res­tri­al, satel­lite sig­nal and ca­ble tele­vi­sion for­mats.

Asked whether Dig­i­cel T&T was, in fact, con­tem­plat­ing IP-TV and if the Massy group would be a com­peti­tor or a part­ner, Dig­i­cel T&T's com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Pen­ny Gomez said: "Dig­i­cel has on­ly made an ap­pli­ca­tion for a broad­cast li­cence at this time and it would be ir­re­spon­si­ble of us to make any in depth com­ment re your queries."Dig­i­cel is no new­com­er to ca­ble TV, ac­cord­ing to a Sun­day BG sto­ry pub­lished in Au­gust.

Dig­i­cel Group CEO, Colm Delves said: "We are in­vest­ing heav­i­ly in ca­ble TV, con­tent and fi­bre across our mar­kets to en­sure that Dig­i­cel is po­si­tioned at the fore­front of a da­ta in­ten­sive world where our cus­tomers are able to en­joy mul­ti­me­dia ex­pe­ri­ences on mul­ti­ple de­vices and avail of ad­vanced so­lu­tions for their busi­ness­es. We look for­ward to ex­pand­ing our foot­print fur­ther in this space in the com­ing year through a com­bi­na­tion of ac­qui­si­tions and green­field builds."

Dig­i­cel al­ready owns ca­ble tele­vi­sion as­sets across the Caribbean.On Ju­ly 17, Dig­i­cel had made an an­nounce­ment that it was rolling out fi­bre in sev­er­al mar­kets through its sub-sea fi­bre op­tic ac­qui­si­tion that at the time was said to be "near­ing com­ple­tion."

Dig­i­cel had an­nounced that it reached an agree­ment with Tel­star Ca­ble Lim­it­ed to ac­quire its ca­ble and fi­bre net­work in Ja­maica. Tel­star pro­vides ca­ble TV, broad­band and tele­pho­ny ser­vices. On com­ple­tion - sub­ject to ap­proval by Ja­maica's Broad­cast­ing Com­mis­sion - Dig­i­cel said it would in­vest in the net­work to in­crease cov­er­age and fur­ther ex­pand the prod­ucts, ser­vices and con­tent avail­able to ca­ble cus­tomers in Ja­maica.

The ac­qui­si­tion was Dig­i­cel's fourth Caribbean ca­ble ac­qui­si­tion and will in­crease its ca­ble foot­print to six mar­kets:

- Turks and Caicos Is­lands, April 2014: Dig­i­cel ac­quired WIV Ca­ble TV in the Turks and Caicos Is­lands and its sis­ter com­pa­ny, TCT, which of­fers broad­band ser­vices.

- Do­mini­ca, Feb­ru­ary 2014: Dig­i­cel ac­quired SAT Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­vides a range of TV, tele­pho­ny and broad­band in­ter­net ser­vices to res­i­den­tial and busi­ness cus­tomers in Do­mini­ca.

- An­guil­la, Nevis and Montser­rat, No­vem­ber 2013: Dig­i­cel ac­quired Caribbean Ca­ble Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Hold­ing Ltd, a ca­ble TV and in­ter­net ser­vice provider in An­guil­la, Nevis and Montser­rat.

"Dig­i­cel has al­so been in­vest­ing heav­i­ly in green­field fi­bre build-outs hav­ing bro­ken ground on next-gen­er­a­tion fi­bre net­works in Bar­ba­dos, Haiti, Ja­maica and Trinidad," Dig­i­cel said in a re­lease. "This in­vest­ment in fi­bre re­flects the com­pa­ny's on­go­ing fo­cus on busi­ness so­lu­tions which has shown al­most 40 per cent year on year growth in rev­enues. These fi­bre builds are near­ing com­ple­tion and pre-sell­ing of the ser­vices has al­ready com­menced."

On its sub­ma­rine fi­bre op­tic ac­qui­si­tion, Dig­i­cel said: "In or­der to dri­ve the de­liv­ery of mul­ti­me­dia con­tent - as well as im­prove of­fer­ings for mo­bile da­ta ser­vices and busi­ness so­lu­tions - Dig­i­cel has al­so se­cured sig­nif­i­cant off-is­land sub-sea fi­bre band­width."

In a De­cem­ber 23, 2013, re­lease, Dig­i­cel had said it en­tered in­to a share and as­set pur­chase agree­ment with Glob­al Caribbean Fi­bre to ac­quire "cer­tain sub­ma­rine fi­bre as­sets in the East­ern Caribbean re­gion. This deal will pro­vide Dig­i­cel with a whol­ly-owned sub­ma­rine fi­bre op­tic ca­ble net­work of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,100 kilo­me­ters (km), pro­vid­ing ca­pac­i­ty from Trinidad to Guade­loupe. The pro­posed trans­ac­tion is sub­ject to reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval and is ex­pect­ed to close in the com­ing weeks."

But Mr Young is not on the Dig­i­cel TT board, so the ques­tion is why did he re­sign from the OCM board?