Michael Lee-Chin, the chairman and founder of the NCB Financial Group (NCBFG), confirmed on Friday that one of his connected companies sold 22.2 million shares of the Jamaican financial services company across the floor of the Jamaican Stock Exchange (JSE) on Monday.
On Friday, the Trinidad and Tobago Stock Exchange posted a notice on its website that a connected party sold two blocks of NCBFG shares, comprising 22,077,688 shares and 157,106 for a total of 22,245,794 shares on February 26. On that day, the last traded price of NCBFG was J$69.01 and the closing price was J$69.45. That means the gross proceeds from the transaction would have been about J$1.54 billion or approximately US$9.84 million.
Sunday Business was told that the seller of the two blocks of NCBFG shares was AIC Barbados and the buyer was Jamaica’s National Insurance Fund.
As at December 31, 2023, Lee-Chin was listed as owning or having an interest in 1,467,645,135 NCBFG shares, which is 59.49 per cent of NCBFG’s 2,466,762,828 shares.
On December 31, 2022, Lee-Chin was listed as owning or having an interest in 1,506,353,835 NCBFG shares, which was 61.06 per cent of NCBFG’s issued share capital.
Lee-Chin sold a net total of 38,708,700 NCBFG in the 2023 calendar year.
Asked if there was any truth to the report that AIC sold 22.2 million NCBFG shares on the JSE last week, Lee-Chin responded by “Yes,” by WhatsApp message.
Questioned on why would AIC Barbados, which he controls, sell 22.2 million shares in NCBFG, further reducing its ownership of Jamaica’s largest financial institution by about 1 per cent, Lee-Chin responded with a WhatsApp voice note:
“There is great demand, excellent demand for large blocks of shares in NCBFG. As you know, the exchanges in the Caribbean are quite illiquid and the existing shareholders are not selling. So you have small amounts of NCBFG shares trading every day.
“For a big, professional institution, or institutions, or high net work individuals who want to take positions in NCBFG, there is just no shares to be had.
“So, selling provides more liquidity to the market and to people who want to get into the stock at these prices because they are very bullish about what they see at NCBFG.
“So, this is a way of providing liquidity to people who want to get in because they are bullish on the direction they have seen NCBFG is heading.”
On the Business Guardian of June 15, 2023, it was reported that a connected party of Michael Lee-Chin sold 22,708,700 shares in the regional financial services company on June 9. That was just over two weeks following the May 24, 2023 announcement that Lee-Chin was“taking a leave of absence immediately from the boards of NCBFG, National Commercial Bank Jamaica and Guardian Holdings Ltd (GHL).”
In the statutory notice announcing the immediate leave of absence, NCBFG said Lee-Chin it would “allow him to focus on certain pressing business and personal matters,” and that he anticipated these matters taking approximately three months.
Friday’s sale of the block of 22,708,700 shares took place across the floor of the Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE) at the price of about J$68 a share and would have resulted in gross proceeds of about J$1.54 billion (about US$10 million).
The share sale amounts to 1.50 per cent of Lee-Chin’s listed shareholding in NCBFG of 1,505,187,375 shares and is 0.92 per cent of the financial conglomerate’s 2,466,762,828 issued share capital.
In’ The Big Interview’ television interview, recorded in June 2023, Lee-Chin said periodically not only does he sell shares of the financial conglomerate he founded, he also buys shares in the company “depending on what liquidity I need.”
Asked in June last year what signal he was sending to the shareholders of NCBFG by selling 1.5 per cent of his shares in NCBFG, Lee-Chin said, “No signal because I retain 98.5 per cent of my shares in the company.”