Ja­maica’s Mus­son Group is re­port­ed to have paid the share­hold­ers of Trinidad Sys­tems Ltd, one of the coun­try’s largest in­for­ma­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) com­pa­nies, US$6.07 mil­lion to ac­quire 45 per cent of the lo­cal firm.

The dis­clo­sure came in the sec­ond quar­ter fi­nan­cials of Pro­duc­tive Busi­ness So­lu­tions (PBS), which is a sub­sidiary of Facey Group, owned by Mus­son (Ja­maica) Ltd. In its quar­ter­ly re­port, PBS said it ac­quired a 45 per cent “ben­e­fi­cial in­ter­est” in TSL, which was de­scribed as “a promi­nent provider of elec­tron­ic pay­ment so­lu­tions and the ex­clu­sive dis­trib­u­tor of Xe­rox in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Mus­son In­vest­ment Ltd is list­ed as the own­er of 906,875 or­di­nary TSL shares in a June 3, 2024 Com­pa­ny Reg­istry fil­ing.

TSL chief ex­ec­u­tive Stu­art Fran­co told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that no new shares were is­sued to Mus­son and the T&T’s com­pa­ny’s ex­ist­ing share­hold­ers sold shares to the Ja­maican firm.

Asked what the ac­qui­si­tion of the 45 per cent stake by Mus­son means for TSL, Fran­co said, “It is a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to col­lab­o­rate with an en­ti­ty that has a much wider reach than we do. They are in mul­ti­ple coun­tries in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, where­as we are in Trinidad. Via this part­ner­ship we formed, this al­lows us to ex­pand our so­lu­tion of­fer­ings and of­fer our ex­per­tise through­out the ter­ri­to­ries.”

Fran­co is the cur­rent pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of T&T (Am­cham T&T).

Mus­son and PBS are both ma­jor­i­ty owned by Ja­maican busi­ness ex­ec­u­tive, Paul B Scott, who has been in­stru­men­tal in the ac­qui­si­tion of sev­er­al T&T com­pa­nies in the last five years.

Scott is the largest share­hold­er and chair­man of Se­prod, one of biggest man­u­fac­tur­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­nies in the re­gion. Se­prod ac­quired a ma­joriy stake in AS Bry­den in 2022. Con­nect­ed per­sons to Scott now own 1.05 bil­lion AS Bry­den shares, ac­cord­ing to the T&T com­pa­ny’s 2023 an­nu­al re­port.

In Sep­tem­ber 2020, Mus­son (Ja­maica) Ltd ac­quired two com­pa­nies, Massy Tech­nolo­gies (Trinidad) Ltd and Massy Tech­nolo­gies (Guyana) Ltd, from the Massy Group for an es­ti­mat­ed US$40 mil­lion.

In Sep­tem­ber 2019, a com­pa­ny called Gen­er­al Ac­ci­dent In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny Ja­maica (Genac) ac­quired a 55 per cent stake in T&T gen­er­al in­sur­er, Mo­tor One, from Kall­co Con­struc­tion. The re­main­ing 45 per cent was owned by Mi­con Mar­ket­ing, which was ac­quired by AS Bry­den in an all-share trans­ac­tion in 2022. Genac is an 80 per cent-owned sub­sidiary of the Mus­son Group, ac­cord­ing to an Oc­to­ber 2022 Ja­maica Ob­serv­er ar­ti­cle.