Nadaleen Singh

For­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai is one of two new di­rec­tors elect­ed to the board of Ansa McAL The oth­er is re­cent­ly re­tired pres­i­dent of Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Lim­it­ed David-Du­lal-White­way.

They were elect­ed by a unan­i­mous show of hands at the group's an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing yes­ter­day at Tatil Build­ing, Port-of-Spain.

In an in­ter­view af­ter the meet­ing, Howai said it was an ho­n­our to serve on a board was pres­ti­gious as Ansa McAL's and he was im­pressed by the brand strength. He said that was the fac­tor that in­flu­enced his de­ci­sion to ac­cept the in­vi­ta­tion by Group Chair­man and Chief Ex­ec­u­tive to join the board.

"The group has some big plans for the fu­ture. I am glad to be able to con­tribute to the plans that they have and to con­tribute to the con­tin­u­ing growth of the group," he said.

Howai, who was al­so a di­rec­tor of Bea­con In­sur­ancem, said he had stepped down from that po­si­tion be­cause "there is a fi­nan­cial sub­sidiary in the group."

In his re­port to share­hold­ers, Sab­ga said the group is meet­ing its for­eign ex­change de­mands and has not de­fault­ed on any of its pay­ments to sup­pli­ers. He added that the short­age of US cur­ren­cy has not "re­tard­ed" the group in any way.

Sab­ga dis­agreed with a share­hold­er who said that Bar­ba­di­ans do not like Trinidad com­pa­nies. He said the group feels very wel­come in Bar­ba­dos and has been in­vest­ed there for 65 years. He added that low­er oil prices and a pick­up in tourism ar­rivals have con­tributed to high­er rev­enues for the group in Bar­ba­dos.

Asked whether the group would be lay­ing off em­ploy­ees, Sab­ga said Ansa McAL has been in­tro­duc­ing new tech­nol­o­gy, which has meant ex­cess jobs in some ar­eas.

"We've been in­vest­ing very heav­i­ly in plant and equip­ment and when you do that you im­prove ef­fi­cien­cies and when you do that you take peo­ple out of the op­er­a­tions. You end up with bet­ter pay­ing jobs but less jobs," he said.

The ex­ec­u­tive said the group had de­cid­ed not to fill the role of chief op­er­a­tions of­fi­cer (COO) which was va­cat­ed last year by Ger­ry Brooks. Sab­ga said at this stage, there was no need for a COO be­cause the group is be­ing man­aged by sec­tor heads.

He al­so an­nounced that the group is ex­pect­ed to have two ac­qui­si­tions com­plet­ed with­in 45 days but did not give de­tails, say­ing on­ly that one com­pa­ny is lo­cat­ed in the US and the oth­er com­pa­ny in T&T, earn­ing US cur­ren­cy.

The Ansa McAL Group of Com­pa­nies re­port­ed prof­it be­fore tax of $1.163 bil­lion for the pe­ri­od end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2015. Group fi­nance di­rec­tor Aneal Ma­haraj said rev­enues in­creased by two per cent, while op­er­at­ing prof­it in­creased by 10 per cent from $1,080 mil­lion in 2014 to $1,184 mil­lion in 2015. Div­i­dend per share in­creased by eight per cent from $1.30 in 2014 to $1.40 in 2015.

The com­pa­ny al­so im­proved its liq­uid­i­ty po­si­tion, re­port­ing $1.4 mil­lion in 2015 com­pared to $1.6 mil­lion the pre­vi­ous year.

For the first quar­ter of 2016, Ma­haraj said trends are show­ing a sharp con­trac­tion in con­sumer spend­ing but he is con­fi­dent the group is re­silient enough to with­stand chal­lenges in the ex­ter­nal en­vi­ron­ment.