Port-of-Spain based ANSA McAL Group of Com­pa­nies says it mov­ing to ac­quire two new com­pa­nies in Bar­ba­dos, near­ly eight months af­ter it lost in its ef­fort to buy out the brew­ery com­pa­ny, Banks Hold­ings Lim­it­ed (BHL).

Pres­i­dent and Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of ANSA McAL Bar­ba­dos Lim­it­ed, Nicholas Mout­tet, Tues­day night said that while in the past 20 months the con­glom­er­ate had opened three stores it was con­tin­u­ing to look for op­por­tu­ni­ties to in­vest in Bar­ba­dos.

"In fact, I can't give the de­tails and to the re­porters here, please don't ask...but we are cur­rent­ly in ne­go­ti­a­tions right now to ac­quire two oth­er Bar­ba­di­an com­pa­nies, which in it­self rep­re­sent sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment again in Bar­ba­dos," Mout­tet said at the open­ing of the group's lat­est ad­di­tion–the Sis­sons Paint shop at Wildey, St Michael.

Mout­tet de­clined to give fur­ther de­tails out of fear that the deals could be com­pro­mised.

"And while in a con­glom­er­ate en­vi­ron­ment there is al­ways a lot of buy­ing and sell­ing, as you would know a few months ago we men­tioned our in­ten­tion to sell Tri­mart (Su­per­mar­ket)...and the Tri­mart sale we ex­pect to close in the com­ing weeks," he added.

The on­line pub­li­ca­tion, Bar­ba­dos TO­DAY re­port­ed yes­ter­day that it un­der­stood that if all went ac­cord­ing to plan, the ac­qui­si­tion of the two un­named com­pa­nies could be fi­nalised by the end of Oc­to­ber this year.

The ANSA group of com­pa­nies owns a num­ber of op­er­a­tions and big brands in a range of sec­tors in Bar­ba­dos, in­clud­ing au­to­mo­tive, dis­tri­b­u­tion, fi­nan­cial ser­vices, re­tail and ser­vices.

It is al­so in­volved in tech­nol­o­gy, man­u­fac­tur­ing, me­dia, bev­er­age and re­al es­tate across its oth­er mar­kets.

The ANSA McAL group, which is the ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er of Guardian Me­dia Ltd, com­pris­es over 60 com­pa­nies through­out the Caribbean and the US, em­ploy­ing over 6,000 peo­ple. It gen­er­at­ed rev­enues of $6.1 bil­lion and prof­it be­fore tax above TT$ 1 bil­lion as of De­cem­ber 31, 2015.

Mout­tet told the re­tail store open­ing that since the in­vest­ment in Stan­dard Dis­trib­u­tors in Bar­ba­dos about 55 years ago by the ANSA McAL group, the com­pa­ny con­tin­ued to in­vest heav­i­ly here.

"It is our sec­ond largest ge­og­ra­phy in terms of our in­vest­ment in the re­gion. It is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant to us and we con­tin­ue to in­vest for decades," he said.

Point­ing to the com­pa­ny's com­mit­ment to the is­land, Mout­tet said while "times are hard" in Bar­ba­dos and some com­pa­nies had not been able to ex­pand in re­cent times, the ANSA McAL group of com­pa­nies had been able to open three re­tail stores in the last 20 months.

One, he said, was the 10,000 square foot fur­ni­ture and ap­pli­ance Stan­dard re­tail store in Wildey, which was opened just over one year and eight moths ago.

"Four months ago we opened up an­oth­er Stan­dard store in Bridgetown in Nor­man Cen­tre, and then to­day we are here to cel­e­brate the open­ing of the first Sis­sons Paint shop...in Bar­ba­dos and a re-en­try of ANSA Coat­ings, which is the own­er of the Sis­sons brand," he ex­plained.

"So three stores in 20 months, and we con­tin­ue to look for op­por­tu­ni­ties to in­vest in Bar­ba­dos," Mout­tet said.

Deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of In­dus­try, In­ter­na­tion­al Busi­ness, Com­merce and Small Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment So­nia Fos­ter said the in­vest­ment in the new shop rep­re­sent­ed the com­pa­ny's con­fi­dence in the Bar­ba­dos econ­o­my.

"The ben­e­fits will not on­ly be found in the cre­ation of jobs, but the en­hanced val­ue as well as the prod­uct of­fer­ings in the Wildey area," Fos­ter said.

"This and oth­er en­ter­pris­es which have re­cent­ly opened their doors, pro­vide en­cour­age­ment to oth­er such en­ti­ties look­ing to in­vest in Bar­ba­dos and send a mes­sage that Bar­ba­dos is in­deed open for busi­ness," she said. (CMC)