Pan-Amer­i­can Life In­sur­ance Group (PALIG) has an­nounced the ap­point­ment of Win­ston Williams as chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer for the Caribbean, ef­fec­tive No­vem­ber 1, 2025.

In its con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial state­ment third quar­ter re­sults to Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025 Guardian Hold­ings Ltd has an­nounced unau­dit­ed prof­it at­trib­ut­able to eq­ui­ty share­hold­ers of $1,281 mil­lion, ex­ceed­ing the pri­or year’s re­sults of $598 mil­lion by $683 mil­lion or 114 per cent.

Af­ter eight decades of out­fit­ting Caribbean homes, Stan­dard Dis­trib­u­tors Ltd is tran­si­tion­ing from a re­tail house­hold name to a new chap­ter un­der Term Fi­nance (Trinidad & To­ba­go) Ltd.

Trinidad Off­shore Fab­ri­ca­tors Com­pa­ny LTD (TOF­CO) has an­nounced the suc­cess­ful float-off of the Man­a­tee jack­et – Row C which oc­curred on Oc­to­ber 1, mark­ing a ma­jor mile­stone in the ex­e­cu­tion of this off­shore project.

When most peo­ple hear the term ‘ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence’ (AI), they pic­ture self-dri­ving cars, voice as­sis­tants like Siri and Alexa, or chat­bots that gen­er­ate text on de­mand. These in­no­va­tions, while im­pres­sive, rep­re­sent on­ly a frac­tion of AI’s po­ten­tial. They per­form spe­cif­ic tasks re­mark­ably well, yet lack the flex­i­bil­i­ty and con­tex­tu­al aware­ness that de­fine hu­man in­tel­li­gence.

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The restau­rant in­dus­try in T&T is fac­ing an un­prece­dent­ed squeeze, and the clo­sure of Trot­ters Gulf City, San Fer­nan­do, stark­ly il­lus­trates just how acute the pres­sures have be­come.
Restau­rant own­ers say steep new al­co­hol tax­es, ris­ing Na­tion­al In­sur­ance con­tri­bu­tions, es­ca­lat­ing elec­tric­i­ty and cook­ing gas costs and high­er rents are col­lid­ing to crush al­ready thin prof­it mar­gins, forc­ing full-ser­vice op­er­a­tors to make im­pos­si­ble choic­es.
Pe­ter George Jr., CEO of Trot­ters Group, told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that the de­ci­sion to shut­ter the Gulf City out­let was dri­ven by an un­re­lent­ing con­ver­gence of pres­sures. “The post-covid re­cov­ery has been slow, con­sumer spend­ing has shift­ed and steep tax­es and spi­ralling in­put costs are cre­at­ing an ex­tinc­tion event for full-ser­vice restau­rants,” he said. George de­scribed how in­creas­ing­ly price-con­scious cus­tomers can now achieve “four times the val­ue” by buy­ing al­co­hol at re­tail stores and drink­ing at home, un­der­min­ing a cru­cial prof­it cen­tre for restau­rants.

Voic­es from the in­dus­try

De­spite Venezuela’s sus­pen­sion of all gas deals with T&T, multi­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­pa­ny Shell says it re­mains com­mit­ted to de­vel­op­ing the Man­a­tee gas field, sig­nalling that the diplo­mat­ic rift be­tween Cara­cas and Port-of-Spain has not yet de­railed cross-bor­der en­er­gy am­bi­tions.

In the face of per­sis­tent for­eign ex­change im­bal­ances and mount­ing stake­hold­er con­cerns, the Cen­tral Bank of T&T (CBTT) is plac­ing forex al­lo­ca­tion re­form at the fore­front of its strate­gic agen­da.

Al­though there are con­cerns about the Gov­ern­ment’s abil­i­ty to re­duce the fis­cal deficit, over­all the Gov­ern­ment pre­sent­ed a sol­id bud­get that has tried to ad­dress some of the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic chal­lenges.

Clax­ton Bay-based Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed (TCL) yes­ter­day re­port­ed net in­come of $159.6 mil­lion for the nine months end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025, a 24.2 per cent de­cline com­pared to the $210.6 mil­lion the ce­ment man­u­fac­tur­er earned for the same pe­ri­od in 2024.

Carib Brew­ery Ltd has ap­point­ed Leesa Mu­ral­ly-Pan­tin as its new man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, ef­fec­tive to­day, No­vem­ber 1.

The West In­di­an To­bac­co Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (WIT­CO) saw its prof­its take a hit for the nine months end­ed 30 Sep­tem­ber 2025, with prof­it be­fore tax falling 46 per cent to $82.9 mil­lion, down $70 mil­lion from the same pe­ri­od last year.