Joel Julien

joel.julien@guardian.co.tt

Re­gion­al con­glom­er­ate ANSA McAL will be mak­ing a “very mea­sured in­vest­ment” in­to the cryp­tocur­ren­cy space, the group’s Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer An­tho­ny N Sab­ga III has re­vealed.

Sab­ga made the com­ments yes­ter­day as the con­glom­er­ate host­ed a vir­tu­al meet­ing to re­lease its fi­nan­cial re­sults for the first half of this year.

ANSA McAL record­ed a prof­it be­fore tax of $305 mil­lion for the six months end­ed June 30, 2021.

This was a 107 per cent in­crease when com­pared to the first half of 2020 when prof­it be­fore tax was $147 mil­lion.

To­tal as­sets al­so grew by six per cent to $16.632 bil­lion.

And with a healthy gear­ing ra­tio of 11.4 per cent, Sab­ga said the con­glom­er­ate has a pos­i­tive out­look for the fu­ture.

“A lit­tle bit of a wild card and some­thing that is in­ter­est­ing and we want­ed to al­so share. We will be tak­ing an in­ter­est­ing step and mak­ing a very mea­sured ac­qui­si­tion or a mea­sured in­vest­ment in­to the blockchain cryp­tocur­ren­cy space,” Sab­ga said.

“We def­i­nite­ly see that as a de­vel­op­men­tal pole and notwith­stand­ing it al­ready be­ing one of the best per­form­ing as­sets class­es in his­to­ry it is some­thing that we are, as I men­tioned, tak­ing a mea­sured ap­proach, as to how we might par­take, and as or­gan­i­sa­tion learn and al­so ben­e­fit from this emerg­ing econ­o­my,” he stat­ed.

And while Sab­ga men­tioned the con­glom­er­ate’s in­ten­tion to en­ter in­to dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy, he as­sured that steps have been tak­en to strength­en ANSA McAL’s pro­tec­tion against cy­ber­at­tacks and ran­somware.

“I want to share and re­mind every­one that we were ac­tu­al­ly the vic­tim of a cy­ber­at­tack last year and were able to cor­rect and take the key learn­ings and con­tin­ue to take the key learn­ings from that to pre­vent a sit­u­a­tion like that from ever hap­pen­ing again,” Sab­ga stat­ed.

“And we are fair­ly con­fi­dent that we have ex­cep­tion­al­ly ro­bust sys­tems in place, a con­tin­u­ous pro­gramme of train­ing and im­prove­ment for our peo­ple that in­ter­face with our sys­tem how to de­tect an at­tack when it comes in. We have for­ti­fied the en­tire struc­ture and frame­work of the group’s IT se­cu­ri­ty ca­pac­i­ty and ca­pa­bil­i­ty to pre­vent that,” he stat­ed.

“A cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty at­tack can be a very ma­te­r­i­al and rep­u­ta­tion­al­ly dam­ag­ing item and as such, it re­mains as the front and cen­tre risk that needs to be man­aged, not just for our group but for every­one, for all ma­jor or­gan­i­sa­tions in the re­gion. So we take the key learn­ings of hav­ing been a vic­tim and have used that to pro­pel us to pro­tect our­selves even fur­ther which is the best pos­si­ble ad­vice avail­able,” Sab­ga stat­ed.

In terms of an­oth­er ma­jor threat fac­ing the re­gion, Sab­ga said the con­glom­er­ate re­mains a pro­po­nent of vac­ci­na­tion against the COVID-19 virus as this will en­sure a healthy so­ci­ety and en­cour­age eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery.

As such Sab­ga said that the con­glom­er­ate’s in­ter­nal vac­ci­na­tion lev­el cur­rent­ly stands as high as 70 per cent.