The Gov­ern­ment of Ja­maica on Tues­day ho­n­oured busi­ness­man Paul Simp­son by nam­ing the founder of the Cor­ner­stone Group as a mem­ber of the Or­der of Dis­tinc­tion in the rank of Com­man­der on the coun­try's 62nd In­de­pen­dence an­niver­sary.

Simp­son is the pres­i­dent and CEO of pri­vate­ly held Cor­ner­stone Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd In­vest­ments and deputy chair­man of its sub­sidiary Bari­ta In­vest­ments Ltd, which is list­ed on the Ja­maica Stock Ex­change. He was ho­n­oured for his con­tri­bu­tion to the bank­ing in­dus­try.

In Au­gust 2018, Cor­ner­stone Fi­nan­cial, then named Cor­ner­stone In­vest­ment Hold­ings Ltd, paid the ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er of Bari­ta In­vest­ments, Ri­ta Humphries Lewin, J$3.07 bil­lion (about US$22.78 mil­lion) to ac­quire 75 per cent of the com­pa­ny she found­ed in 1977.

Yes­ter­day, Bari­ta In­vest­ments closed trad­ing at J$73.92, which placed its mar­ket cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion at US$566.79 mil­lion and the Cor­ner­stone stake of 75.33 per cent at about US$427 mil­lion.

Ja­maican an­a­lysts have said Bari­ta's abil­i­ty to raise cap­i­tal by two ad­di­tion­al pub­lic of­fer­ings (APOs) and two rights is­sues be­tween 2019 and 2022 con­tributed to the in­vest­ment com­pa­ny's rapid growth.

Asked yes­ter­day in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia whose idea was it to raise the cap­i­tal that Bari­ta did, Simp­son said, "It was main­ly my idea, sup­port­ed by Gavin (Jor­dan) and Ja­son (Cham­bers)," two mem­bers of the Cor­ner­stone man­age­ment team."

Asked to out­line the ra­tio­nale of Bari­ta In­vest­ments rais­ing cap­i­tal in the way it did, Simp­son said, "It was be­cause as­set prices at the time, be­cause of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, be­gan to fall and we want­ed to pick up the as­sets at a cheap­er price, know­ing that noth­ing lasts for­ev­er. In hind­sight, I think we did the right thing."

Both Cor­ner­stone and Bari­ta In­vest­ments have links to the ma­jor­i­ty state-owned First Cit­i­zens Group. The T&T bank­ing group is re­port­ed to have lent Cor­ner­stone Fi­nan­cial US$60.1 mil­lion in three cred­it fa­cil­i­ties, while First Cit­i­zens In­vest­ment Ser­vices Ltd is the sec­ond largest share­hold­er of Bari­ta In­vest­ments with 7.43 per cent of the com­pa­ny.