Bond­hold­ers of com­pa­nies con­trolled by Ja­maican Michael Lee-Chin have is­sued a strict ul­ti­ma­tum: a pay­ment of US$94.1 mil­lion by the end of De­cem­ber 2025, or face the po­ten­tial seizure of a sub­stan­tial share­hold­ing in the NCB Fi­nan­cial Group (NCBFG).

The bond­hold­ers of the three com­pa­nies con­trolled by Lee-Chin—AIC (Bar­ba­dos) Ltd, Port­land (Bar­ba­dos) Ltd (PBL), and Spe­cial­ty Cof­fee In­vest­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd—at­tend­ed a town hall meet­ing in Kingston on Wednes­day to re­ceive an up­date on ef­forts to re­solve the over US$364 mil­lion in delin­quent debt across the three en­ti­ties.

The out­stand­ing debt is se­cured by about 1.06 bil­lion shares in NCBFG, which rep­re­sents ap­prox­i­mate­ly 41 per cent of the fi­nan­cial con­glom­er­ate’s out­stand­ing stock. Lee-Chin is chair­man of NCBFG and is the com­pa­ny’s largest share­hold­er.

The bond­hold­ers, rep­re­sent­ed by a com­mit­tee com­pris­ing main­ly ex­ec­u­tives of Ja­maican in­sti­tu­tion­al in­vestors, will vote in De­cem­ber on a for­bear­ance agree­ment that would grant the com­pa­nies a fi­nal chance to re­pay the debt. A key con­di­tion of this truce is the ini­tial US$94.1 mil­lion pay­ment by De­cem­ber 31, 2025. That amount cov­ers US$19.1 mil­lion in out­stand­ing in­ter­est up to ear­ly Sep­tem­ber and a US$75 mil­lion in­stal­ment on the prin­ci­pal.

If com­pa­nies fail to make the US$94.1 mil­lion pay­ment by the end of the year, the trustees of the bonds must pro­vide him with a 45-day win­dow dur­ing which the breach can be cured by pay­ment of the sum. Fail­ure to meet this dead­line will trig­ger the en­force­ment of se­cu­ri­ty, po­ten­tial­ly lead­ing to the seizure and forced sale of the pledged NCBFG shares.

This is not the first time Lee-Chin’s en­ti­ties have faced pay­ment dif­fi­cul­ties. In May 2024, Port­land (Bar­ba­dos) was late on a US$23 mil­lion bond pay­ment, lead­ing to a tem­po­rary “event of de­fault” de­c­la­ra­tion by the trustee, Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd.

Lee-Chin has pre­vi­ous­ly apol­o­gised to the note­hold­ers for the in­con­ve­nience and has worked to se­cure ex­ten­sions and re­struc­ture the debt.

NCBFG is the ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er of T&T’s Guardian Hold­ings Ltd.