ANSA McAL is the pre­ferred bid­der to ac­quire Trinci­ty Mall.

Sun­day Busi­ness un­der­stands that the lo­cal con­glom­er­ate emerged as the suc­cess­ful bid­der for the Trinci­ty Com­mer­cial Cen­tre Ltd (TC­CL), which in­cludes Trinci­ty Mall.

The Trinci­ty Com­mer­cial Cen­tre is part of the CL Fi­nan­cial (CLF) group, which is in liq­ui­da­tion.

ANSA McAL was in­formed in May 2023 by fi­nan­cial ser­vices firm EY, which is han­dling the trans­ac­tion for Grant Thorn­ton, that it was the pre­ferred bid­der.

The liq­uida­tors were grant­ed ap­proval by the High Court for the sale of the mall, which is lo­cat­ed in Trinci­ty in east Trinidad, in 2021. The shop­ping cen­tre was on­ly put on the mar­ket in Sep­tem­ber 2022.

In its 12th re­port to the High Court dat­ed Oc­to­ber 2023, the liq­uida­tors not­ed that in April 2023, it had re­ceived a to­tal of four of­fers—two for the shares in TC­CL, and two for Trinci­ty Mall prop­er­ty as­sets.

“None of the of­fers re­ceived were equal to or high­er than the ap­proved, min­i­mum sale val­ue(s) as­cribed to the as­set via the or­der made by the Court on No­vem­ber 11, 2021 which, in­ter alia, per­mits the joint liq­uida­tors to sell the shares in TC­CL or Trinci­ty Mall,” they not­ed.

The liq­uida­tors said they con­duct­ed an analy­sis of the bind­ing of­fers and ul­ti­mate­ly se­lect­ed a pre­ferred bid­der which HCL’s board ap­proved on May 12, 2023.

“Fur­ther ne­go­ti­a­tions with this se­lect­ed bid­der re­gard­ing sale term par­tic­u­lars are cur­rent­ly un­der­way and are due to be agreed short­ly.

“Due to the of­fers re­ceived be­ing low­er than the min­i­mum sale val­ue ap­proved by the Court, it is an­tic­i­pat­ed that the joint liq­uida­tors will need to ap­ply to the Court for ap­proval to com­plete the sale. Pre­lim­i­nary prepa­ra­tions for this have been com­plet­ed and a for­mal ap­pli­ca­tion will be made once a sale agree­ment has been fi­nalised. In par­al­lel, the joint liq­uida­tors have con­tin­ued to at­tend the pre­vi­ous­ly ref­er­enced bi-week­ly meet­ings of a Home Con­struc­tion Ltd (HCL) project team re­gard­ing Trinci­ty Mall’s di­vest­ment strat­e­gy to man­age op­er­a­tions as well as mon­i­tor and progress the sale process,” the re­port said.

Two weeks ago, the High Court ap­proved the ap­pli­ca­tion by the liq­uida­tors to sell the prop­er­ty, sources told Sun­day Busi­ness.

A Sep­tem­ber 27, 2023 news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ment not­ed that the mall in­clud­ed 53.6 acres of prime land (2,334,816 square feet) and 14 acres of un­de­vel­oped land (609,840 square feet).

Of that amount, 661,000 sq ft is pur­pose-built build­ing space with 490,000 square feet of gross leasable space.

The op­por­tu­ni­ties iden­ti­fied for the po­ten­tial buy­er, out­lined in the ad­ver­tise­ment last Sep­tem­ber, were:

• Four­teen acres of un­used land for de­vel­op­ment and ex­pan­sion pur­pos­es for fu­ture rev­enue po­ten­tial;

• Rental in­come from over 295 stores and kiosks;

• Ac­cess to prime re­al es­tate in Trinidad, and

• Trinci­ty mall is strate­gi­cal­ly placed on the East-West cor­ri­dor of the is­land, with clear high­way vis­i­bil­i­ty and easy ac­cess to pub­lic trans­port.

Trinci­ty Com­mer­cial Cen­tre and the Mall were con­sid­ered the jew­els of Home Con­struc­tion Lim­it­ed (HCL), which is ma­jor­i­ty owned by CL Fi­nan­cial. The group is 51 per cent owned by the life in­sur­ance com­pa­ny, Cli­co, and 49 per cent by Cor­po­ra­tion Sole, the en­ti­ty that holds State as­sets.

Long Cir­cu­lar Mall is al­so up for sale.

In its ninth re­port to the Court for the pe­ri­od June 18 to De­cem­ber 22, 2021, the liq­uida­tors not­ed that the sale of Trinci­ty Com­mer­cial Cen­tre had been sanc­tioned by the court.

In the tenth re­port on its liq­ui­da­tion process, the liq­uida­tors said they “sought and ob­tained sanc­tion from the Court with re­spect to the sale of Trin­i­ty Com­mer­cial Cen­tre Ltd and/or Trinci­ty Mall. HCL man­age­ment and the joint liq­uida­tors have agreed mar­ket­ing and sales doc­u­men­ta­tion and ad­ver­tise­ments with the agent.

The launch of the sales process for Trinci­ty Com­mer­cial Cen­tre Ld and/or Trinci­ty Mall is now im­mi­nent.””

“The joint liq­uida­tors have at­tend­ed bi-week­ly meet­ings of a HCL project team, re­gard­ing the mall’s di­vest­ment strat­e­gy to dri­ve for­ward the Trinci­ty sales process and start plan­ning for the fu­ture di­vest­ment of Long Cir­cu­lar Mall,” it not­ed.

Since 2017, CLF has been un­der liq­ui­da­tion, which is be­ing man­aged by Grant Thorn­ton.

In 2020, the liq­uida­tors in­di­cat­ed their in­ten­tion to pre­pare the prop­er­ties for di­vest­ment.

The CL Fi­nan­cial group had ear­li­er sold HCL’s Val­park and At­lantic Plaza malls to gen­er­ate cash flow for the con­glom­er­ate.

Once the liq­ui­da­tion was an­nounced, the sale of Trinci­ty mall, and even­tu­al­ly Long Cir­cu­lar Mall, were in­evitable.

How­ev­er, the pan­dem­ic af­fect­ed the pace at which the sale of the prop­er­ties pro­ceed­ed.

In 2020, in its sixth re­port to the High Court, dat­ed June 15, 2020, the joint liq­uida­tors had not­ed that the clo­sure of all non-es­sen­tial ten­ants of both malls be­cause of the on­set of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic had neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed the ten­ants.

“As two of the largest in­come-gen­er­at­ing as­sets with­in the Home Con­struc­tion Ltd sub-group, the im­me­di­ate clo­sure of ten­ants sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact­ed the sub-group’s abil­i­ty to re­cov­er rent from its ten­ants.

“Whilst iden­ti­fied as non-es­sen­tial for the pur­pose of the stay-at-home or­der, these are key trad­ing busi­ness­es with­in the group, which ma­te­ri­al­ly con­tribute to prof­it and cash gen­er­a­tion; their clo­sure has had a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on the cash po­si­tion of the group and posed a tan­gi­ble threat to HCL’s over­all sol­ven­cy,” that re­port said.

In the lat­est re­port, the liq­uida­tors not­ed that the re­port­ing pe­ri­od was fo­cused on ad­vanc­ing as­set sales, safe­guard­ing and re­turn­ing val­ue to the com­pa­ny, whilst ad­dress­ing the chal­lenges of op­er­at­ing its busi­ness­es in the pan­dem­ic and as­so­ci­at­ed lock­downs.

With re­gard to the malls, the joint liq­uida­tors not­ed:

“As part of the lift­ing of re­stric­tions and open­ing up of the econ­o­my, shop­ping malls were al­lowed to open again nor­mal­ly. That has al­lowed HCL’s man­age­ment, un­der the su­per­vi­sion of the joint liq­uida­tors, to work close­ly with ten­ants to re­duce ac­cu­mu­lat­ed rent ar­rears and grad­u­al­ly re­duce rent con­ces­sions and as­sis­tance, such that each of the malls in the group is now again charg­ing full rental and ser­vice charge rates. Fur­ther­more, the strat­e­gy of close con­trol has paid div­i­dends in­so­far as ten­an­cy rates have not ma­te­ri­al­ly dropped de­spite the tough con­di­tions be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced by the re­tail ten­ants.”

In May 2022, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was ques­tioned about the sale of Trinci­ty Mall in Par­lia­ment.

Dr Row­ley an­swered that the Gov­ern­ment had no in­volve­ment in that mat­ter as it was be­ing done un­der the di­rec­tion of the Courts and chas­tised the Op­po­si­tion for rais­ing the is­sue as a Gov­ern­ment-re­lat­ed one.

In its fi­nan­cial year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2023, ANSA McAL re­port­ed af­ter-tax prof­it of $594.48 mil­lion, which was an in­crease of 123 per cent com­pared to the $265.77 mil­lion the con­glom­er­ate record­ed in its 2022 fi­nan­cial year.