JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, March 13, 2025

ANSA McAL eyes two Barbados companies

by

20160831

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)


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored