Amid in­creased pub­lic scruti­ny, a di­rec­tor of Guardian Hold­ings Ltd (GHL) — the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny head­quar­tered in West­moor­ings — sold 169,028 shares in the com­pa­ny across the floor of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change (TTSE) on Au­gust 10.

The trans­ac­tion was first dis­closed in a no­tice post­ed on the TTSE web­site on Mon­day, which stat­ed that a con­nect­ed par­ty sold the block of 169,028 shares.

On Au­gust 10, the GHL stock opened at $19, trad­ed as high as $19.40, and closed at $19.40, re­sult­ing in gross pro­ceeds of be­tween $3.21 mil­lion and $3.27 mil­lion.

The trans­ac­tion was con­firmed by an­oth­er GHL di­rec­tor, who said the com­pa­ny was ad­vised by the di­rec­tor in a stan­dard no­ti­fi­ca­tion. The di­rec­tor who pro­vid­ed the con­fir­ma­tion, not­ed that the sale of the 169,028 shares rep­re­sent­ed less than 2 per cent of the di­rec­tor’s to­tal in­di­rect share­hold­ing in GHL.

An­oth­er GHL in­sid­er said the sale of the block of shares was con­duct­ed on Au­gust 10, as that date fell out­side of the black­out pe­ri­od when di­rec­tors and se­nior of­fi­cers of list­ed com­pa­nies are not al­lowed to sell their shares.

About 61 per cent of GHL is owned by the Ja­maican fi­nan­cial con­glom­er­ate, NCB Fi­nan­cial Group. Both GHL and NCBFG are list­ed on the T&T and Ja­maica stocks ex­changes.

On June 9, a con­nect­ed par­ty of NCBFG chair­man Michael Lee-Chin sold a to­tal of 22,708,700 shares of the com­pa­ny on the floor of the JSE. That trans­ac­tion was con­firmed by a se­nior ex­ec­u­tive of the fi­nan­cial group. The trans­ac­tion took place while Lee-Chin was on a three-month leave of ab­sence from the boards of NCBFG, NCB Ja­maica and GHL, which be­gan on May 24.

In the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion cam­paign, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ques­tioned whether the po­ten­tial fail­ure of NCBFG, could pose a risk to T&T’s fi­nan­cial sec­tor.

“There can be a cas­cad­ing fail­ure with­in our fi­nan­cial sys­tem due to the nu­mer­ous in­ter­con­nect­ing link­ages among the NCB Fi­nan­cial Group, Guardian Hold­ings Ltd (GHL), lo­cal banks and fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions with­in our coun­try,” said Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in a speech on Ju­ly 31. That speech was de­bunked by Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert, at a news con­fer­ence ear­li­er this month.