Ma­jor­i­ty State-owned Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed (NEL) has ad­vised that the elec­tion of David Robin­son as chair­man of the board of direc­tors was is­sued in er­ror.

In a no­tice to share­hold­ers yes­ter­day, post­ed on the web­site of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change, NEL re­ferred to its no­tice pub­lished on Tues­day, ad­vis­ing that David Robin­son had been elect­ed chair­man of the board of di­rec­tors of NEL.

“Share­hold­ers are ad­vised that the no­tice was is­sued in er­ror and is here­by re­scind­ed. NEL re­grets any in­con­ve­nience or con­fu­sion caused,” the com­pa­ny said.

The clar­i­fi­ca­tion comes amid height­ened at­ten­tion to gov­er­nance mat­ters across state-af­fil­i­at­ed en­ti­ties, with stake­hold­ers plac­ing in­creased fo­cus on trans­paren­cy in pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

No fur­ther in­for­ma­tion was pro­vid­ed yes­ter­day re­gard­ing the sta­tus of the chair­man­ship or a re­vised ap­point­ment.

Dur­ing the an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing last Fri­day, three NEL di­rec­tors, Ross Alexan­der, Nicole De Fre­itas and In­grid Lash­ley, of­fi­cial­ly re­tired.

No new di­rec­tors were nom­i­nat­ed or elect­ed to re­place them, lead­ing share­hold­ers to ques­tion the sta­bil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy of the com­pa­ny’s gov­er­nance struc­ture.  

On NEL’s web­site last night, the six di­rec­tors of the com­pa­ny were iden­ti­fied as David Robin­son, Stephen Mar­celle, Rhetia M Ro­driguez-San­tana, Nigel Ram­sa­hai, Shereece Smith and Heather Tardieu.

As the fi­nal agen­da item, “oth­er busi­ness,” was in­tro­duced, Pe­ter Per­me­ll, a long­stand­ing share­hold­er, took the floor to press Lash­ley on the no­tice­able ab­sence of any agen­da item for the elec­tion or ap­point­ment of di­rec­tors to fill the now-va­cant board po­si­tions.  

His line of ques­tion­ing high­light­ed a grow­ing con­cern among mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ers: why were three board mem­bers step­ping down with­out any im­me­di­ate suc­ces­sion plan in place?

Ad­dress­ing her last an­nu­al meet­ing on Fri­day, NEL’s for­mer chair Lash­ley ex­plained that the com­pa­ny was com­pelled to hold its an­nu­al meet­ing on Sep­tem­ber 5, the last per­mis­si­ble date un­der the Com­pa­nies Act (15 months af­ter the pre­vi­ous meet­ing). She said that nom­i­na­tions from the Cor­po­ra­tion Sole had not yet been re­ceived.

Once those nom­i­na­tions are re­ceived, Lash­ley stat­ed, the board in­tends to con­vene a spe­cial meet­ing to al­low the com­pa­ny’s share­hold­ers to elect new di­rec­tors.

NEL’s largest share­hold­er is the Gov­ern­ment, via Cor­po­ra­tion Sole, with 66.05 per cent, with 100 per cent State-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny own­ing 16.67 per cent.

NEL is an in­vest­ment hold­ing com­pa­ny in­cor­po­rat­ed on Au­gust 27, 1999, by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go as part of a re­or­gan­i­sa­tion ex­er­cise.

NEL cur­rent­ly owns 51 per cent of the shares of Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT), Trinidad Ni­tro­gen Com­pa­ny (Tri­gen), and Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM). NEL owns 20 per cent of the shares of NGC NGL Com­pa­ny (NGC NGL), 37.84 per cent in NGC Trinidad and To­ba­go LNG (NGC LNG), 33.3 per cent of Pan West En­gi­neers and Con­struc­tors LLC, and its whol­ly owned sub­sidiary, NEL Pow­er Hold­ings.