GEISHA KOW­LESSAR ALON­ZO

An­tho­ny N Sab­ga III, the Group CEO of ANSA McAL, is re­defin­ing what it means to lead a mul­ti-gen­er­a­tional, bil­lion-dol­lar con­glom­er­ate in an era of rapid change.

Sab­ga shared bold in­sights on re­silience, pur­pose-dri­ven lead­er­ship, and strate­gic trans­for­ma­tion at the 16th An­nu­al In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nance and Ac­count­ing Con­fer­ence (AIFAC-2025), host­ed by the In­sti­tute of Char­tered Ac­coun­tants of T&T (ICATT). The con­fer­ence took place on No­vem­ber 20 and 21, at the Hy­att Re­gency and was themed “Fu­ture Ready: In­no­va­tion Trans­for­ma­tion Re­silience.”

Cen­tral to the pre­sen­ta­tion of the third-gen­er­a­tion leader of ANSA McAL group was his shar­ing how vi­sion and adapt­abil­i­ty are shap­ing the fu­ture of one of the re­gion’s most in­flu­en­tial busi­ness em­pires.

Re­flect­ing on the pro­found lega­cy of the busi­ness, Sab­ga ac­knowl­edged the weight and priv­i­lege of fol­low­ing his grand­fa­ther, the late An­tho­ny Sab­ga, and his fa­ther, Nor­man Sab­ga, each of whom nav­i­gat­ed dif­fer­ent his­tor­i­cal and com­mer­cial con­texts.

While his grand­fa­ther faced a post-World War II econ­o­myand his fa­ther had to re­join the group pre­ma­ture­ly due to civ­il un­rest with the an­ti-Viet­nam ri­ots, his own chal­lenge is steer­ing a bil­lion-dol­lar en­ter­prise in­to the fu­ture.

Sab­ga quick­ly clar­i­fied that his role is not that of a spread­sheet builder, which he del­e­gates to “bril­liant peo­ple” who pro­vide sense-check­ing and de­ci­sion sup­port, but rather that of a vi­sion­ary.

He stressed that a leader must “work with what you have” and af­firmed that an or­gan­i­sa­tion be­comes “com­plete­ly un­stop­pable” once it is ground­ed in a clear pur­pose.

“Once you as an in­di­vid­ual ground your­self in a pur­pose and if you could get an or­gan­i­sa­tion ground­ed in that, then you could get that mo­men­tum and you be­come com­plete­ly un­stop­pable. That to me is what I see as my my pow­er...Once you keep ground­ed in that lev­el of gov­er­nance and hum­ble enough to keep your­self sense-checked I think the sky’s the lim­it,” Sab­ga shared.

This pur­pose, for ANSA McAL, is to “in­spire bet­ter choic­es for a bet­ter world,” a North Star that dic­tates strate­gic ac­tions be­yond mere prof­itabil­i­ty, fo­cus­ing in­stead on achiev­ing sig­nif­i­cant size, scale, and im­pact.

This led him to process of port­fo­lio reimag­in­ing, which in­volves both growth and, cru­cial­ly, prun­ing or di­vest­ment.

Un­like his grand­fa­ther, who main­tained cer­tain busi­ness­es which he be­lieved were prof­itable, Sab­ga cham­pi­ons the idea that the Group must al­so recog­nise when it is no longer the pos­si­ble “best par­ent” for cer­tain as­sets.

This vi­sion is con­cen­trat­ed on the “three B’s”: bank­ing, bev­er­age and bleach, sec­tors where the com­pa­ny pos­sess­es a core com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage and sees the great­est po­ten­tial for out­sized re­turns and hemi­spher­ic ex­pan­sion, al­low­ing for the de­ploy­ment of sub­stan­tial cap­i­tal.

“It doesn’t mean we don’t care or still see in­vest­ment in the oth­er ar­eas that are not with­in that the B class or B stream busi­ness­es, but the B busi­ness­es, we see our­selves be­ing able to out­size and de­ploy sub­stan­tial and sig­nif­i­cant cap­i­tal. But al­so where we see core com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage for our­selves. Those are the ar­eas where you could be far more ex­cel­lent than every­one else and in test­ing that we’re see­ing that over and over,” Sab­ga said.

He not­ed that prun­ing is not an in­ven­tion of his era, point­ing out that his fa­ther, who grew the group from a $100 mil­lion to a $1 bil­lion com­pa­ny, achieved this 10x growth through both ac­qui­si­tions and prun­ing, em­pha­sis­ing that this ac­tion—even ex­tend­ing to the work­force—is vi­tal for suc­cess.

The group con­tin­ues its ex­pan­sive strat­e­gy, with in­ter­ests stretch­ing from the US to Ghana, and is ac­tive­ly ex­e­cut­ing on this vi­sion with­in the Caribbean, specif­i­cal­ly men­tion­ing a re­al es­tate in­vest­ment in Guyana, an area where ANSA McAL is lever­ag­ing its deep com­pe­tence, de­vel­oped over 40 to 50 years of pres­ence, by con­tin­u­ing to op­er­ate with­in its val­ued re­al es­tate sec­tor, which al­ready man­ages as­sets like Trinidad’s Grand Bazaar.

Sab­ga al­so stressed that the orig­i­nal busi­ness the­sis for an ac­qui­si­tion or ven­ture is rarely the fi­nal source of val­ue.

He cit­ed the ex­am­ple of the group’s pur­chase of a brew­ery in the Unit­ed States.

“The val­ue that came out of that is a sub­stan­tial boom in the re­al es­tate val­ue and a brand in there that we didn’t even re­alise,” he not­ed, ex­plain­ing that the pro­ject­ed val­ue is not “al­ways the case.”

The key, he ar­gued, is a com­bi­na­tion of dis­ci­pline and tenac­i­ty, adding that lead­ers must re­main “re­silient and stead­fast and fo­cussed and com­mit­ted,” while al­so be­ing prag­mat­ic enough to know when to put down “the dead horse” if a ven­ture is clear­ly fail­ing.

His be­lief is sim­ple: “Once you keep push­ing the but­ton, you’re go­ing to get it right.”

Dis­cussing the ne­ces­si­ty of fu­ture-proof­ing a busi­ness, Sab­ga high­light­ed a re­cent fo­cus on ag­gres­sive­ly re­cruit­ing top tal­ent to beef-up di­verse skill sets.

He ac­knowl­edged that ar­eas like strat­e­gy are core to the ANSA McAL’s op­er­a­tions.

“When I re­turned to Trinidad, I part­nered with my fa­ther at the time, who was then CEO, and said, look, what’s kind of miss­ing here is we’re re­al­ly good at run­ning what it is that we have, but that in­no­va­tion en­gine and that spot­ting of trends, not just in what you’re in, but trends that you’re not in, that needs a shop in and of it­self. I cre­at­ed, at the time, what we called then a group busi­ness de­vel­op­ment de­part­ment, and I head­ed it up, and I’ve re­placed my­self on­go­ing­ly with bril­liant peo­ple,” Sab­ga said.

He al­so shared in­sights in­to the val­ues that shaped his jour­ney and the en­dur­ing lega­cy of his fam­i­ly.

“I’ve been priv­i­leged to wit­ness a work eth­ic that is sec­ond to none,” Sab­ga not­ed. “That in­quis­i­tive­ness, that re­silience — no mat­ter what hap­pens — it’s some­thing that has al­ways stood out.”

He re­flect­ed on how ed­u­ca­tion be­came a trans­for­ma­tive lay­er in his own life, con­trast­ing it with the chal­lenges faced by his grand­fa­ther, a sev­en-year-old im­mi­grant who ar­rived in Trinidad with lit­tle for­mal school­ing. “My grand­fa­ther had to be self-taught,” Sab­ga ex­plained. “He lever­aged men­tors at every stage of his jour­ney — peo­ple who taught him re­tail, hire pur­chase, and the fun­da­men­tals of busi­ness.”

Sab­ga cred­it­ed this tra­di­tion of men­tor­ship and adapt­abil­i­ty as key dri­vers be­hind the growth of the ANSA McAL Group, un­der­scor­ing that ca­pa­bil­i­ty and con­tin­u­ous learn­ing re­main vi­tal in to­day’s com­pet­i­tive land­scape.

“But at the same time, that con­nec­tion to ser­vice. What are we re­al­ly in busi­ness to do is to serve a cus­tomer’s need with ei­ther a prod­uct or a ser­vice, and that’s why we get re­ward­ed. We get re­ward­ed, how­ev­er it is, via the util­i­ty that we pro­vide and bring in­to the world and sup­ply. And once you re­main ground­ed, and that is what you’re about, and that’s some­thing I’m con­stant­ly re­mind­ed about, and it keeps me ground­ed, keeps me fo­cussed on what’s im­por­tant,” he added.

Ad­dress­ing a per­son­al ques­tion about the stress and even lone­li­ness at times of his high-stakes role—es­pe­cial­ly hav­ing tak­en over as CEO in Jan­u­ary 2020, just be­fore the glob­al COVID-19 pan­dem­ic hit in March—Sab­ga of­fered a can­did per­spec­tive on well-be­ing.

He char­ac­terised his ear­ly tenure as a “bap­tism of fire,” re­call­ing the sud­den clear­ing of the of­fice as a sur­re­al mo­ment.

“I be­came CEO in Jan­u­ary. I was like, what, this is ‘suck eye,’ I could have been CEO 10 years ago, and then, bam, March. All of a sud­den COVID, and then with­in a day, the of­fice was cleared out, and I sat in the of­fice sort of just freak­ing out at what so­ci­ety in the world had cho­sen for it­self, and what we were go­ing to have to nav­i­gate,” he re­called.

Sab­ga re­lies on the “oxy­gen mask” anal­o­gy: “If you’re not strong and ca­pa­ble, and not look­ing af­ter your­self, well, how are you go­ing to take care of any­body else.”

He be­lieves that true well-be­ing comes from a holis­tic ap­proach that nur­tures the mind, body and spir­it.

At the heart of his phi­los­o­phy is spir­i­tu­al re­con­nec­tion—an ac­knowl­edge­ment of a high­er pow­er and a com­mit­ment to “re­con­nect­ing to your pur­pose­ful­ness.”

Sab­ga ac­tive­ly seeks out men­tors and mean­ing­ful con­nec­tions, be­liev­ing that these re­la­tion­ships help “re-cen­tre your­self” and re­mind peo­ple of the larg­er, shared pur­pose of in­spir­ing “bet­ter choic­es for a bet­ter world.”

Through these prac­tices, he demon­strates that well-be­ing is not just an in­di­vid­ual pur­suit but a col­lec­tive jour­ney to­ward cre­at­ing pos­i­tive change.