Asha Javeed

The An­gos­tu­ra board has ter­mi­nat­ed the ser­vices of man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and chief ex­ec­u­tive Wayne Yip Choy. The de­ci­sion was made at a board meet­ing yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. The Guardian was told Yip Choy "made an un­rea­son­ble claim on the com­pa­ny," and de­spite ef­forts to reach an am­i­ca­ble so­lu­tion, the board agreed to ter­mi­nate his ser­vices. That "in­cen­tive com­pen­sa­tion claim," val­ued at more than $20 mil­lion, was in­clud­ed in Yip Choy's con­tract. The claim was tied to An­gos­tu­ra's fi­nan­cial per­for­mance. Yip Choy, the Guardian was told, made his claim for the year 2010. The Guardian un­der­stands An­gos­tu­ra could not ho­n­our the claim which re­sult­ed in Yip Choy is­su­ing a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to the com­pa­ny.

Fol­low­ing re­ceipt of the let­ter, the com­pa­ny "opened the door" to re­solve the is­sue, but Yip Choy de­clined the of­fer put to him in favour of le­gal ac­tion against the com­pa­ny. In a re­lease ti­tled Man­age­ment Changes at An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Lim­it­ed, spokesman Giselle Laronde-West stat­ed: "An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Lim­it­ed an­nounces that Mr Wayne Yip Choy will no longer hold the po­si­tion of man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and CEO of the com­pa­ny, ef­fec­tive Sep­tem­ber 21st, 2011. "The Board of Di­rec­tors of AHL has vest­ed the day-to-day man­age­ment of the com­pa­ny to the Ex­ec­u­tive Man­age­ment team," the re­lease said. "Mr Yip Choy will no longer serve on the Board of Di­rec­tors of An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Lim­it­ed and its sub­sidiaries."

Yip Choy has been piv­otal in the com­pa­ny's turn­around, fol­low­ing its $1.2 bil­lion debt af­ter the col­lapse of CL Fi­nan­cial Lim­it­ed in Jan­u­ary 2009, its in­abil­i­ty to pro­duce fi­nan­cial state­ments for 2009 and sub­se­quent delist­ing from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change. Last year, the com­pa­ny's ex­per­i­men­tal mar­ket­ing in­creased sales by 18 per cent. An­gos­tu­ra record­ed sales of $394.6 mil­lion for the first six months of this year-an in­crease of 11.6 per cent com­pared with Jan­u­ary to June 2010. For the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to Sep­tem­ber 2010, the com­pa­ny net­ted a prof­it of $91.6 mil­lion. The com­pa­ny's af­ter-tax prof­it de­clined by 65 per cent from $101.3 mil­lion for the first half of 2010 to $35.8 mil­lion for the first half of 2011. The com­pa­ny took a $25.9 mil­lion hit in 2011 as a re­sult of the im­pact of its ex­po­sure to the volatil­i­ty of the eu­ro on a lega­cy loan. Yip Choy did not an­swer calls to his cell phone yes­ter­day.