San­dra Chouthi

BCB Hold­ings, which was of­fi­cial­ly list­ed on the T&T Stock Ex­change last week, was for­mer­ly known as BB Hold­ings Ltd. It un­der­went a name change in May 2009. In Feb­ru­ary 2009, Be­lize Bank Ltd, changed its name to British Caribbean Bank Ltd, and op­er­ates in the Turks and Caicos Is­lands. In June 2009, Be­lize Bank In­ter­na­tion­al Ltd changed its name to British Caribbean Bank In­ter­na­tion­al Ltd. It is based in Be­lize and op­er­ates in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

The group's eq­ui­ty in­vest­ment com­pris­es about 24.8 per cent of Grupo Agroin­dus­tri­al CB, SA, and re­lat­ed com­pa­nies, (Nu­mar), which have in­ter­ests in agro-pro­cess­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion op­er­a­tions, prin­ci­pal­ly in Cos­ta Ri­ca. BCB Hold­ings Ltd is the par­ent com­pa­ny of a group of fi­nan­cial ser­vices busi­ness­es op­er­at­ing in Be­lize and the Turks and Caicos Is­lands. BCB Hold­ings has stat­ed that its am­bi­tion is "to be the bank­ing and fi­nan­cial ser­vices provider of choice in the Caribbean re­gion.

The bank­ing ser­vices of­fered by BCB In­ter­na­tion­al, which has re­la­tion­ships with Bank of Amer­i­ca and Citibank, in­clude:

�2 de­posit ac­counts in mul­ti­ple cur­ren­cies: US, Cana­di­an, the UK pound and the eu­ro

�2 flex­i­ble types of loan fa­cil­i­ties

�2 cred­it, debt and pre­paid cards

�2 on­line stock trad­ing

�2 on­line bank­ing

�2 on­line mer­chant ac­quir­ing

�2 com­pa­ny for­ma­tion and ad­min­is­tra­tion

Ac­cord­ing to BCB Hold­ings' 2009 an­nu­al re­port, through Be­lize Cor­po­rate Ser­vices Ltd and af­fil­i­at­ed com­pa­nies, BCB In­ter­na­tion­al of­fers Be­lize In­ter­na­tion­al Busi­ness Com­pa­ny (Be­lize IBC) for­ma­tion and main­te­nance, along with com­ple­men­tary ad­min­is­tra­tive and an­cil­lary ser­vices. "A Be­lize IBC is a le­gal en­ti­ty sim­i­lar to the Unit­ed States-based cor­po­ra­tion or lim­it­ed li­a­bil­i­ty com­pa­ny and now en­joys to­tal ex­emp­tion from all forms of tax­a­tion in Be­lize," the re­port stat­ed. "As of March 2009, Be­lize Cor­po­rate Ser­vices has over 16,000 com­pa­nies un­der man­age­ment."

Nu­mar

BCB Hold­ings owns 24.8 per cent of Nu­mar, which owns ed­i­ble oil pro­cess­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion op­er­a­tions and palm seed plan­ta­tions in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca. The com­pa­ny is en­gaged in the pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of ed­i­ble oils, mar­garine, in­dus­tri­al oils and an­i­mal field. In fis­cal 2009, earn­ings from its par­ent in Nu­mar in­creased by 20.3 per cent to US$23.2 mil­lion from US$19.1 mil­lion in 2008. "Nu­mar's prof­its were dri­ven by the con­tin­ued high world mar­ket prices for crude palm oil over most of the year," the re­port stat­ed. Nu­mar's in­vest­ment strat­e­gy was to fo­cus on in­creased pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ties in low cost ar­eas, which its man­age­ment is now con­vinced was well timed. Sales in­creased by 22.8 per cent to US$518.5 mil­lion in fis­cal 2009 from US$422.1 mil­lion in fis­cal 2008, with net in­come in­creas­ing from US$79.1 mil­lion to US$95.6 mil­lion.

The ef­fects of the glob­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis did not es­cape Nu­mar. World palm oil prices fell in late 2008 to close the year with an av­er­age price of US$503 per met­ric tonne com­pared with prices for most of the year at more than US$1,100 per met­ric tonne. Prices are back to more than US$750 per met­ric tonne, al­most a 50 per cent in­crease since De­cem­ber 2008. Nu­mar's op­er­a­tions in­clude ver­ti­cal­ly in­te­grat­ed op­er­a­tions, be­gin­ning with palm oil seeds and clones, plan­ta­tions, ex­trac­tion, re­fin­ing, and sell­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion of con­sumer brand­ed prod­ucts. Nu­mar al­so has a high­ly ac­tive seed re­search and pro­duc­tion pro­gramme. Nu­mar sells oil palm seed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, in­clud­ing to In­done­sia, the largest world pro­duc­er of palm oils.

Debt owed

Ac­cord­ing to the an­nu­al re­port, "In Jan­u­ary 2008, the bank reached a set­tle­ment with the gov­ern­ment of Be­lize con­cern­ing a debt owed to the bank by Uni­ver­sal Health Ser­vices Com­pa­ny Ltd. This debt was guar­an­teed by the gov­ern­ment. "By the bank hav­ing re­quired by the Cen­tral Bank of Be­lize to cred­it the ac­count of the gov­ern­ment with monies re­ceived from the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment, the gov­ern­ment is in breach of its le­gal oblig­a­tion un­der the 2008 set­tle­ment agree­ment, and the bank is en­ti­tled to dam­ages re­sult­ing from the gov­ern­ment's breach. "The bank is vig­or­ous­ly pur­su­ing its claims against the gov­ern­ment through the Ap­peals Board in Be­lize and through ar­bi­tra­tion in Lon­don and, hav­ing re­ceived the ad­vice of ex­ter­nal ad­vis­ers, ex­pects to re­cov­er its claims in full."

Con­sult­ing ser­vices

"Dur­ing the year, the group utilised the con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices of Bear­wood Ser­vices Ltd, a Unit­ed King­dom com­pa­ny in which Lord Ashcroft has an in­ter­est. The ag­gre­gate fees paid to Bear­wood by the com­pa­ny for the year end­ed March 31, 2009, amount­ed to US$0.3 mil­lion (2008–US$0.9 mil­lion)," ac­cord­ing to the an­nu­al re­port. Lord Michael Ashcroft is the ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of BCB Hold­ings Ltd.

Cli­co

At March 31, BCBH held in­vest­ments of US$2.4 mil­lion in an­nu­ities is­sued by Cli­co Trinidad, ma­tur­ing in De­cem­ber 2009. "Dur­ing 2008, Cli­co's in­vest­ment port­fo­lios be­came ma­te­ri­al­ly im­paired as a re­sult of the glob­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis, re­sult­ing in some branch­es be­ing placed un­der court su­per­vi­sion. "Based on as­sur­ances giv­en in pub­lic an­nounce­ments on the fi­nan­cial po­si­tion of Cli­co by the Gov­ern­ment of T&T, in which it was stat­ed Cli­co's oblig­a­tions would be met in full, the com­pa­ny ex­pects to re­cov­er the in­vest­ment and no pro­vi­sion against re­cov­ery has been made," stat­ed BCB Hold­ings 2009 an­nu­al re­port.

The Board

�2 Lord Michael Ashcroft, KCMG, ex­ec­u­tive chair­man (Be­lizean)

�2 Dr Eu­ric Bobb, non-ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, (Trinida­di­an)

�2 Pe­ter Gaze, chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer (British)

�2 Lyn­don Guisep­pi, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (Trinida­di­an)

�2 Philip John­son, deputy chair­man (Be­lizean)

�2 Wen­dell Mot­t­ley non-ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor (Trinida­di­an)

�2 Philip Os­borne, di­rec­tor and com­pa­ny sec­re­tary (British)

�2 Cheryl Jones, non-ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor (Amer­i­can)

�2 John Sear­le, non-ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor (Be­lizean)

About Lord Ashcroft

Lord Michael An­tho­ny Ashcroft, Knight Com­man­der of the Or­der of St Michael and St George, was born March 4, 1946. He is an in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness­man, phil­an­thropist and politi­cian. He was made a life peer in 2000, and is a deputy chair­man of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty in the Unit­ed King­dom. He holds British and Be­lizean na­tion­al­i­ty and is a be­longer of the Turks and Caicos Is­lands. Be­longer is a clas­si­fi­ca­tion nor­mal­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with British over­seas ter­ri­to­ries. Ashcroft was ranked 65th in the Sun­day Times' Rich List 2008, with an es­ti­mat­ed per­son­al wealth of �1,110 mil­lion. Ashcroft chairs BCB Hold­ings–(list­ed on Lon­don's Al­ter­na­tive In­vest­ment Mar­ket (AIM)–which has in­ter­ests in fa­cil­i­ties ser­vices, fi­nance and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions.

BCB Hold­ings is the par­ent com­pa­ny of The Be­lize Bank, which for­mer­ly held a ma­jor­i­ty stake in Be­lize Tele­me­dia Ltd un­til it was na­tion­alised by the gov­ern­ment of Be­lize. The con­tro­ver­sial Ashcroft–who has do­nat­ed funds to po­lit­i­cal par­ties in the UK and Aus­tralia, and to uni­ver­si­ties, among oth­er in­sti­tu­tions and caus­es–has in­ter­ests in the par­ent com­pa­ny of Speed­Net, Be­lize's on­ly ri­val telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny. Ashcroft, who trav­els in a pri­vate Lear­jet, al­so has sig­nif­i­cant in­ter­ests in the fol­low­ing com­pa­nies quot­ed on the AIM: Mav­in­wood, Carlisle, One­Source, Cor­po­rate Ser­vices Group, Wat­ford, Lon­don Town, Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing, Glob­al Health.