Ca­ble & Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, the mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­er of Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad & To­ba­go (TSTT) has made its clear­est state­ment yet on its de­sire to take full con­trol of its joint ven­ture in T&T, of which the Gov­ern­ment in­vest­ment ve­hi­cle, Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd, is the ma­jor­i­ty 51 per cent share­hold­er.

Speak­ing in Lon­don on Thurs­day, Ca­ble & Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer, Tim Pen­ning­ton, told in­vest­ment an­a­lysts and jour­nal­ists that the com­pa­ny would like to take full con­trol of its joint ven­ture in T&T and is keen to make a de­ci­sion soon even if that means it may be forced to sell its 49 per cent stake.

"Our pre­ferred ob­jec­tive is to move to full con­trol, which is what we have done in oth­er mar­kets such as the Mal­dives, but if we can't do this we will ex­it it. We'd like to re­solve the sit­u­a­tion one way or an­oth­er soon," Pen­ning­ton told Dow Jones Newswires in an in­ter­view at the re­lease of Ca­ble & Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions six-month fi­nan­cial re­port.

Ca­ble & Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions now has busi­ness­es in the Caribbean, Pana­ma, Macau and Mona­co & Is­lands but con­firmed in Sep­tem­ber that it was in talks to sell its Mona­co & Is­lands unit to a Bahrain com­pa­ny and last month con­firmed that it was dis­cussing the sale of its 51 per cent stake in CTM of Macau to a Chi­nese com­pa­ny.

Speak­ing on Thurs­day, Ca­ble & Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions chief ex­ec­u­tive Tony Rice said the com­pa­ny had made progress in re­shap­ing its busi­ness in the six-month pe­ri­od. "We have al­so made progress on our strat­e­gy to re­shape the busi­ness. Dur­ing the first half we ex­it­ed our West African en­ter­prise busi­ness, and con­firmed dis­cus­sions re­gard­ing pos­si­ble trans­ac­tions in­volv­ing our Mona­co & Is­lands and Macau busi­ness units," he said.

"These steps are in line with our stat­ed plan to fo­cus our man­age­ment ca­pa­bil­i­ty and fu­ture in­vest­ment on the Pan-Amer­i­can re­gion where we have scale, syn­er­gy and strong mar­ket po­si­tions as well as sev­er­al growth economies." The Lon­don-based telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions provider is un­der pres­sure in The Ba­hamas to sell down its 51 per cent stake in the mo­nop­oly telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions providers there.

Pen­ning­ton said that it is too ear­ly to say which op­tion is the like­ly out­come of the bankers' re­view. Ef­forts to con­tact TSTT chair­man Ever­ald Snag­gs proved fu­tile as calls to his phone went to voice­mail.

Asked which of the two op­tions the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers Union pre­ferred, con­trol of TSTT by Ca­ble & Wire­less or its ex­it from the com­pa­ny, CWU sec­re­tary gen­er­al, John Julien said: "We have al­ways ad­vo­cat­ed that TSTT should be ful­ly owned and con­trolled by the Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of T&T. Since 1991, when they got con­trol of 49 per cent of Tel­co, we had op­posed the Gov­ern­ment's al­lo­ca­tion to them of 49 per cent of TSTT.

"They were nev­er a com­pa­ny that was will­ing to in­vest in the in­fra­struc­ture. They were on­ly in­ter­est­ed in cream­ing off the prof­its. They want­ed con­trol but they want­ed the Gov­ern­ment to fund the in­fra­struc­ture. "We are call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to call the bluff of Ca­ble & Wire­less and in any event to con­trol the 49 per cent of TSTT owned by them and en­gage in mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sions with the union on how that stake should be di­vest­ed.

"Any oth­er ac­tion will see the union and its mem­bers vig­or­ous­ly op­pos­ing any con­trol of TSTT, ex­cept the Gov­ern­ment through the peo­ple of T&T, who are the re­al own­ers of TSTT."