The late Bernard Du­lal-White­way, for­mer CEO of Neal and Massy Hold­ings Ltd, and busi­ness­man Os­car Fran­cois will be in­duct­ed in­to the Busi­ness Hall of Fame when the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce hosts its an­nu­al Cham­pi­ons of Busi­ness gala event on No­vem­ber 7 at the Hy­att Re­gency, in Port-of-Spain. They top the list of ho­n­ourees for this year's event re­leased by the Cham­ber yes­ter­day.

Du­lal-White­way, who died in 2009 at age 62, had been an ex­ec­u­tive at Neal & Massy for more than 25 years and was a re­cip­i­ent of the Cha­co­nia Gold medal for his con­tri­bu­tion to busi­ness de­vel­op­ment in T&T.

Os­car H Fran­cois be­gan his trad­ing com­pa­ny in 1958 af­ter a long ca­reer as a sales man­ag­er. It start­ed off as a small dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny to sup­ply a range of Amer­i­can, Cana­di­an and Eu­ro­pean pre­scrip­tion phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals to phar­ma­cies in T&T. By 1961, the com­pa­ny had ex­pand­ed in­to per­son­al care prod­ucts and to­day mar­kets a wide range of In­ter­na­tion­al and lo­cal brands.

Oth­ers to be ho­n­oured this year in­clude the Ken­son Group of Com­pa­nies, en­tre­pre­neur Lisa Wick­ham, busi­ness­man Derek Chin and his Dachin Group of Com­pa­nies, as well as Michael Aboud of Amal­ga­mat­ed Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices Lim­it­ed.

The T&T Cham­ber al­so an­nounced yes­ter­day that Mar­vin E Odum, pres­i­dent of Shell Oil Com­pa­ny, will be this year's keynote speak­er.

Odum, who be­gan his Shell ca­reer as an en­gi­neer in 1982, has served in sev­er­al of man­age­ment po­si­tions with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in both tech­ni­cal and com­mer­cial as­pects of en­er­gy.

He was named pres­i­dent of the com­pa­ny in 2008 and had pre­vi­ous­ly served as ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent since 2005, with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Shell's ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion busi­ness­es in the west­ern hemi­sphere.

The Cham­ber has part­nered with EY (for­mer­ly Ernst & Young) for the En­tre­pre­neur of the Year cat­e­go­ry to recog­nise win­ners in the spheres of Emerg­ing En­tre­pre­neur and Mas­ter En­tre­pre­neur.

Recog­ni­tion will be giv­en to ten peo­ple in the cat­e­gories of the Busi­ness Hall of Fame, In­ter­na­tion­al­ly Known...T&T Owned and EY En­tre­pre­neur of the Year (Mas­ter En­tre­pre­neur & Emerg­ing En­tre­pre­neur).

The List

The full list of in­ductees and fi­nal­ists is as fol­lows:

Busi­ness Hall of Fame In­ductees:

Bernard Du­lal-White­way (posthu­mous)

Os­car Fran­cois

In­ter­na­tion­al­ly Known...T&T Owned Win­ner:

Ken­son Group of Com­pa­nies

EY En­tre­pre­neur of the Year Fi­nal­ists–Emerg­ing En­tre­pre­neur:

Lisa Wick­ham (Imag­ine Me­dia In­ter­na­tion­al Ltd)

Chris­t­ian & David Stone (More Vi­no Ltd)

Mar­cus Sun Kow

(Fresh Start Ltd)

EY En­tre­pre­neur of the Year Fi­nal­ists–Mas­ter En­tre­pre­neur:

(The win­ner will com­pete in the 2016 Glob­al En­tre­pre­neur of the Year com­pe­ti­tion)

Derek Chin (The Dachin Group of Com­pa­nies)

Do­minic Hadeed (Blue Wa­ters Prod­ucts Ltd)

Michael Aboud (Amal­ga­mat­ed Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices Ltd)

Mario Sab­ga-Aboud (Glob­al Brands Ltd)