An­gos­tu­ra chair­man Ger­ald Yet­ming, yes­ter­day, as­sured share­hold­ers at the an­nu­al meet­ing of the rum and bit­ters pro­duc­er that the com­pa­ny will not end up as a ma­jor­i­ty state-owned com­pa­ny, even though the Cli­co res­o­lu­tion calls for the trans­fer of Cli­co's shares in An­gos­tu­ra and CL World Brands (along with Home Con­struc­tion) to the Gov­ern­ment.

Cli­co owns 32 per cent of An­gos­tu­ra (66.9 mil­lion shares) and 48 per cent of CL World Brands, which owns 45 per cent of An­gos­tu­ra (some 92.5 mil­lion shares), which means that if both sets of shares are trans­ferred to the Gov­ern­ment, it would own 54 per cent of An­gos­tu­ra.

This would make An­gos­tu­ra a ma­jor­i­ty state-owned com­pa­ny.

Asked what would the Gov­ern­ment's stake in An­gos­tu­ra be when Cli­co's shares in the com­pa­ny and CL World Brands are trans­ferred to the State, Yet­ming said: "In the fi­nal share­hold­ers' agree­ment, cer­tain trans­ac­tions are con­tem­plat­ed, which are all linked to the Cli­co res­o­lu­tion, which is ex­pect­ed to bring a com­plete and fi­nal res­o­lu­tion to the Gov­ern­ment's in­ter­ven­tion in Cli­co.

"At the end of it, it is not ex­pect­ed that the Gov­ern­ment will end up with any share­hold­ing in An­gos­tu­ra to have it qual­i­fy as a state en­ter­prise and I want the share­hold­ers to be re­as­sured of that."

Sev­er­al of the share­hold­ers at the meet­ing raised the is­sue of the $984 mil­lion debt that the CL Fi­nan­cial group owes to An­gos­tu­ra, for which the com­pa­ny has made a 100 per cent pro­vi­sion.

An­swer­ing one of the share­hold­ers, Yet­ming said the to­tal res­o­lu­tion of the is­sues be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and CL Fi­nan­cial/Cli­co is in­ter­twined and that the An­gos­tu­ra board was pur­su­ing the re­cov­ery of the $984 mil­lion debt in a man­ner that would be in the best in­ter­ests of the rum com­pa­ny's share­hold­ers.

Yet­ming told the share­hold­ers that he did not want to say any­thing more on the mat­ter be­cause at last year's an­nu­al meet­ing he was re­port­ed to the lo­cal Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion for al­leged­ly mak­ing a state­ment of a ma­te­r­i­al, non-pub­lic fact at the meet­ing. Yet­ming said the fact that he was able to ad­dress yes­ter­day's an­nu­al meet­ing was an in­di­ca­tion that the SEC in­ves­ti­ga­tion had turned up no wrong­do­ing on his part. He not­ed that had he been found guilty he would have faced mil­lions of dol­lars in fines and years in jail.

Mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­er ac­tivist, Pe­ter Per­me­ll, ad­mit­ted that the per­son re­port­ing Yet­ming to the SEC last year was him.

For An­gos­tu­ra's 2014 re­sults, the group gen­er­at­ed $217 mil­lion in re­sults from con­tin­u­ing op­er­a­tions, which was about 11 per cent high­er than the re­stat­ed re­sults for 2013.

The rum and bit­ters com­pa­ny's af­ter-tax prof­it for 2014 was $153.4 mil­lion, which was sub­stan­tial­ly less than the $289 mil­lion de­clared in 2013–a year in which An­gos­tu­ra record­ed a one-off gain of $151 mil­lion from the sale of as­sets and the set­tle­ment of debt.