Mus­son (Ja­maica) Ltd has widened its re­gion­al foot­print with the com­ple­tion of its 100 per cent ac­qui­si­tion of Bea­con In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny Ltd, a deal that marks an­oth­er ma­jor step in the group’s steady ex­pan­sion across T&T.

The trans­ac­tion, fi­nalised last Fri­day, will see Mus­son make Bea­con — T&T’s fourth-largest gen­er­al in­sur­er — a sub­sidiary of Gen­er­al Ac­ci­dent In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny (Ja­maica) Ltd, sub­ject to fi­nal reg­u­la­to­ry ap­provals. Mus­son al­ready owns 80 per cent of Gen­er­al Ac­ci­dent.

Bea­con was first put on the mar­ket in late 2023, re­port­ed­ly seek­ing a min­i­mum price of US$30 mil­lion, at a time when the lo­cal gen­er­al in­sur­ance sec­tor was in con­sol­i­da­tion mode.

Found­ed in 1972 by the late Az­iz Hadeed, and sub­se­quent­ly led by his son Ger­ry, the com­pa­ny grew from its 13 Stan­more Av­enue base in­to a Caribbean play­er with op­er­a­tions in Bar­ba­dos, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, St Vin­cent, St Kitts, St Lu­cia as well as T&T.

CGH Ltd was last stat­ed to be Bea­con’s largest share­hold­er with 46 per cent, fol­lowed by Coral­isle Group (40 per cent) and an in­di­vid­ual in­vestor with 14 per cent. Ger­ry Hadeed con­trols two-thirds of CGH, with the re­main­ing in­ter­est held by his son Chris­t­ian. Christo­pher Wood­hams is Bea­con’s CEO.

“Gen­er­al Ac­ci­dent shares many of Bea­con’s in­sur­ance prin­ci­ples, the most im­por­tant of which is keep­ing our promis­es. I’m con­fi­dent that Gen­er­al Ac­ci­dent will con­tin­ue our proud his­to­ry of in­vest­ing in peo­ple and tech­nol­o­gy and pro­vid­ing out­stand­ing ser­vice to our clients when it mat­ters most,” said Ger­ry Hadeed, in a re­lease an­nounc­ing the deal.

When the trans­ac­tion is com­plet­ed, the Hadeed fam­i­ly will be­come mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ers in Gen­er­al Ac­ci­dent (Ja­maica), while Wood­hams and Chris­t­ian Hadeed are ex­pect­ed to join its board of di­rec­tors.

Al­though Gen­er­al Ac­ci­dent al­ready op­er­ates sub­sidiaries in Trinidad and Bar­ba­dos, Bea­con will con­tin­ue to trade as an in­de­pen­dent sub­sidiary, main­tain­ing both brand iden­ti­ties in each mar­ket. Wood­hams and his ex­ist­ing team will re­main in charge, re­port­ing di­rect­ly to Gen­er­al Ac­ci­dent Group CEO Sharon Don­ald­son. The com­bined op­er­a­tions of Bea­con and Gen­er­al Ac­ci­dent are pro­ject­ed to gen­er­ate J$32 bil­lion (US$198.4 mil­lion) in gross writ­ten pre­mi­ums.

Gen­er­al Ac­ci­dent chair­man PB Scott said: “We have long ad­mired Bea­con as an out­stand­ing, well man­aged in­sur­ance com­pa­ny. We are priv­i­leged to now have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work with its tal­ent­ed lead­er­ship team, com­bine Bea­con with our own busi­ness and cre­ate a pow­er­ful plat­form across the Caribbean.”

The Bea­con trans­ac­tion con­tin­ues Mus­son’s de­lib­er­ate ac­qui­si­tion strat­e­gy in T&T. In Jan­u­ary 2024, Pro­duc­tive Busi­ness So­lu­tions Ltd (PBS) — an­oth­er Mus­son sub­sidiary — pur­chased 45 per cent of Trinidad Sys­tems Group Ltd for $24.12 mil­lion (US$3.54 mil­lion). That fol­lowed PBS’s US$54 mil­lion ac­qui­si­tion of PBS Tech­nol­o­gy Group Ltd in Sep­tem­ber 2021, which it­self had bought Massy Tech­nolo­gies Trinidad and Guyana in Sep­tem­ber 2020.

In June 2022, some 60 per cent of lo­cal dis­trib­u­tor AS Bry­den & Sons Hold­ings Ltd (AS­BH) was snapped up by Se­prod Ltd, Ja­maica’s largest man­u­fac­tur­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny — and one of Mus­son’s most sig­nif­i­cant hold­ings.

In June 2025, Se­prod raised that stake to 80 per cent through a share-swap that paid AS­BH share­hold­ers in new Se­prod shares.