Ja­maica's largest bank by as­sets, NCBJ, yes­ter­day con­sum­mat­ed the ac­qui­si­tion of a 29.9 per cent stake in T&T's largest in­sur­ance com­pa­ny, Guardian Group, for an undis­closed sum.

The stake pur­chased by NCBJ, whose ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er is Ja­maican bil­lion­aire Michael Lee Chin, is sig­nif­i­cant be­cause it is just un­der the 30 per cent thresh­old that would have trig­gered a manda­to­ry takeover bid for all of Guardian Group's out­stand­ing shares.

The trans­ac­tion in­volved the Lok Jack and Ahamad fam­i­lies sell­ing most of their stake in Guardian Group to NCBJ through a pri­vate sale. Al­so sell­ing some of its shares to NCBJ was the In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nance Cor­po­ra­tion (IFC), the World Bank af­fil­i­ate that in­vest­ed US$75 mil­lion in Guardian Group in 2010.

The trans­ac­tion al­so in­volved the Lok Jack and Ahamad fam­i­lies buy­ing back the 12 per cent stake in GHL held by the Roy­al Bank of Cana­da (RBC) and IFC's re­main­ing shares, lead­ing to the ex­it from Guardian Group of its two blue-chip for­eign in­vestors.

The re­sult would be that NCBJ is GHL's largest sin­gle share­hold­er; the Lok Jack and Ahamad fam­i­lies would joint­ly be the sec­ond largest share­hold­ing block with a 22 per cent stake and both RBC and the IFC have end­ed their share­hold­ing re­la­tion­ship with the West­moor­ings-based in­sur­ance com­pa­ny.

The com­ple­tion of the trans­ac­tion is sub­ject to it re­ceiv­ing all nec­es­sary reg­u­la­to­ry ap­provals in T&T and in Ja­maica.

Ad­dress­ing fi­nan­cial an­a­lysts, stock­bro­kers and jour­nal­ists at a brief­ing at the Hy­att yes­ter­day, GHL chair­man Arthur Lok Jack said: "I am very hap­py that we have achieved a re­gion­al so­lu­tion. In the process we have re­placed two share­hold­ers de­sir­ing ex­its with share­hold­ers who are ea­ger to sup­port the growth and ex­pan­sion of the Guardian Group."

The NCBJ ac­qui­si­tion of the sig­nif­i­cant stake in GHL will see Lok Jack re­main as the chair­man of the GHL board and the ma­jor­i­ty of the board will con­tin­ue to be in­de­pen­dent di­rec­tors, ac­cord­ing to a Guardian Group state­ment re­leased at yes­ter­day's brief­ing.

Speak­ing at the brief­ing yes­ter­day, Lee Chin com­pared how he felt yes­ter­day "ner­vous and ex­cit­ed" with his feel­ing on March 22, 2002, when he signed to pur­chase a 75 per cent stake in NCBJ from the Gov­ern­ment of Ja­maica, through a res­o­lu­tion com­pa­ny called FIN­SAC, which was then head­ed by Patrick Hyl­ton.

Yes­ter­day, Hyl­ton, who is now the group man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of NCBJ, said the in­vest­ment by the Ja­maican bank in the T&T in­sur­ance com­pa­ny cre­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ties for growth.

Guardian Group CEO Ravi Tewari said: "The align­ment of NCBJ and GHL is a very pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment and holds great op­por­tu­ni­ty for our share­hold­ers, our clients and our em­ploy­ees."

For the 12-month pe­ri­od end­ing Sep­tem­ber 30, 2015, NCBJ de­clared a net prof­it of J$12.3 bil­lion, which works out to be about US$102 mil­lion, from as­sets of J$523.8 bil­lion (about US$4.4 bil­lion). At its De­cem­ber 2014 year end, Guardian Group's net prof­it was $400 mil­lion (US$63 mil­lion).