T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) pres­i­dent Rolph Bal­go­b­in is the new chair­man of the CL Fi­nan­cial group, the fi­nan­cial­ly trou­bled con­glom­er­ate that re­ceived a mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar state bailout sev­en years ago.

Bal­go­b­in, along with In­grid Lash­ley, An­tho­ny Hosang and Ter­rence Bharath, are the four gov­ern­ment nom­i­nees to the sev­en-mem­ber CL Fi­nan­cial board.

Bal­go­b­in serves on the Massy Hold­ings board as well as on the Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Ad­vi­so­ry Board.

The four were ap­point­ed a month ago, but did not get down to work be­fore this week, as a re­sult of con­cerns ex­pressed by the share­hold­ers' rep­re­sen­ta­tives on the CL Fi­nan­cial board.

The share­hold­er di­rec­tors want­ed clar­i­fi­ca­tion of cer­tain state­ments per­tain­ing to the sale of the group's as­sets made by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert dur­ing his mid-year bud­get re­view on April 8.

In ac­cor­dance with the June 2009 share­hold­ers' agree­ment be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and CL Fi­nan­cial, the four gov­ern­ment di­rec­tors are joined by three rep­re­sent­ing the in­ter­ests of the share­hold­ers of the group.

The three share­hold­ers' rep­re­sen­ta­tives on the CL Fi­nan­cial board are Port-of-Spain at­tor­ney Fredrick Gilkes, Trevor Mar­shall and Al­bert Tom Yew.

The one-month de­lay in op­er­a­tional­is­ing the ap­point­ments of the four gov­ern­ment di­rec­tors meant that Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Mau­rice Suite, re­signed as the chair­man of An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd ef­fec­tive April 11.

It was ex­pect­ed that one of the four gov­ern­ment ap­pointees on the CL Fi­nan­cial board would have re­placed Suite as the chair­man of An­gos­tu­ra, which is a pub­licly list­ed com­pa­ny that is ma­jor­i­ty owned by the CL Fi­nan­cial group.

Up to late yes­ter­day, there was no of­fi­cial an­nounce­ment of a new An­gos­tu­ra chair­man.