Port­land (Bar­ba­dos) Ltd, a com­pa­ny con­trolled by the Ja­maica-born bil­lion­aire, Michael Lee-Chin, missed the fi­nal pay­ment of prin­ci­pal and in­ter­est on a US$23 mil­lion, 8.25 per cent, short-term bond when it ma­tured last Tues­day, April 30.

As a re­sult of that missed pay­ment, it is an event of de­fault “if the com­pa­ny (Port­land Bar­ba­dos) fails to pay with­in sev­en busi­ness days, fol­low­ing the due date, any prin­ci­pal, in­ter­est and ar­rears of in­ter­est un­der this trust deed,” ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion 6.01.01 of the trust deed, bond­hold­ers said.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd, which serves as trustee for the bond is­sue, wrote to bond­hold­ers May 1,2024, the day af­ter Port­land Bar­ba­dos missed the pay­ment.

“There­fore, if the com­pa­ny (Port­land Bar­ba­dos) does not make the April pay­ment with­in sev­en days of the April pay­ment date, that is, close of busi­ness on Thurs­day, May 9, 2024, an event of de­fault would be deemed to have oc­curred,” bond­hold­ers who re­ceived the May 1 let­ter told Guardian Me­dia the let­ter stat­ed.

They said the let­ter states that the trust deed gives Re­pub­lic Bank, as trustee, the abil­i­ty to ex­er­cise its rights un­der the trust deed to “de­mand re­pay­ment on a full in­dem­ni­ty ba­sis,” if it re­ceives writ­ten in­struc­tions of bond­hold­ers hold­ing at least 51 per cent of the out­stand­ing bond or up­on an ex­tra­or­di­nary res­o­lu­tion by bond­hold­ers, fol­low­ing a meet­ing of the in­vestors.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Lee-Chin re­quest­ed a meet­ing of bond­hold­ers for to­day, dur­ing which they said he is go­ing to ask for a 90-day ex­ten­sion to give Port­land Bar­ba­dos time to pay the prin­ci­pal, in­ter­est and ar­rears of in­ter­est on the bond.

In a What­sApp ex­change with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Lee-Chin did not re­spond to a ques­tion ask­ing him to con­firm that he called a bond­hold­ers’ meet­ing to ask for the 90-day ex­ten­sion.

He did, though, ex­press con­fi­dence that Port­land Bar­ba­dos would not de­fault on its oblig­a­tions to its bond­hold­ers.

“I don’t see the val­ue of this pre­ma­ture re­port­ing. Is­suers get ex­ten­sions all the time,” said a mes­sage from Lee-Chin.

The Re­pub­lic Bank trustee’s let­ter ap­pears to con­firm a vir­tu­al meet­ing of bond­hold­ers to be held to­day.

“Notwith­stand­ing the com­pa­ny miss­ing the April pay­ment date, an agent and di­rec­tor of the com­pa­ny, Michael Lee-Chin, has oral­ly ex­pressed his will­ing­ness to meet vir­tu­al­ly with all note­hold­ers, at a date and time to be de­ter­mined, but pri­or to May 9, 2024. Mr Lee-Chin ex­pressed that at any such meet­ing he may pro­pose to note­hold­ers an ex­ten­sion of the fa­cil­i­ty and con­se­quent­ly an ex­ten­sion of the April pay­ment date,” ac­cord­ing to the let­ter to bond­hold­ers.

The let­ter re­quest­ed that bond­hold­ers re­spond ur­gent­ly to two op­tions:

• “If the April pay­ment is not re­ceived on/be­fore the close of busi­ness on Thurs­day, May 9, whether you would like us to de­mand full re­pay­ment;

• “Whether you are in favour of the pro­posed meet­ing by Mr Lee-Chin and we will con­vene the meet­ing.”

Port­land Bar­ba­dos is the in­ter­me­di­ate hold­ing com­pa­ny of the NCB Fi­nan­cial Group (NCBFG), of which Lee-Chin is the founder and chair­man.

The ul­ti­mate par­ent com­pa­ny of NCBFG is Port­land Hold­ings Inc, which is in­cor­po­rat­ed in Cana­da. Port­land Hold­ings Inc is con­trolled by Lee-Chin, who is pres­i­dent, sec­re­tary and chair­man of the com­pa­ny.

On its web­site, Port­land Hold­ings is de­scribed as a pri­vate­ly held in­vest­ment com­pa­ny that man­ages pub­lic and pri­vate eq­ui­ty and has an own­er­ship in­ter­est in a col­lec­tion of di­ver­si­fied busi­ness­es op­er­at­ing in sec­tors that in­clude fi­nan­cial ser­vices, in­sur­ance, tourism, agri­cul­ture, con­sumer goods and ser­vices, re­al es­tate de­vel­op­ment, nu­clear en­er­gy and tar­get­ed ra­dionu­clide ther­a­py.

A com­pa­ny called NCB Glob­al Hold­ings owns 143,326,379 Guardian Hold­ings Ltd shares, which is 61.77 per cent of the West­moor­ings-based in­sur­ance com­pa­ny, as at March 31, 2024, ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion on the Ja­maica Stock Ex­change post­ed on May 3, 2024.