Pres­tige Hold­ings, which is chaired by Chris­t­ian Mout­tet, pur­chased a prop­er­ty in De­cem­ber 2023 from a com­pa­ny that he owns shares in and of which he is a di­rec­tor.

The prop­er­ty, which is lo­cat­ed at the cor­ner of Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way and the South­ern Main Road in Val­sayn, cur­rent­ly hous­es three of Pres­tige Hold­ings fran­chis­es.

De­tails of the $23.1 mil­lion pur­chase were re­vealed in the an­nu­al re­port of Pres­tige Hold­ings for 2024, with Mout­tet hail­ing the pur­chase as a strate­gic ac­qui­si­tion.

“The group de­ployed sig­nif­i­cant cap­i­tal on new as­sets as well as as­set im­prove­ment, in­no­va­tion and tech­nol­o­gy, with $102 mil­lion spent on in­vest­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, com­pared to $57 mil­lion in 2023. Part of this in­vest­ment was the strate­gic ac­qui­si­tion of the prop­er­ty at the in­ter­change in Val­sayn, where our KFC, Piz­za Hut and Sub­way brands are lo­cat­ed,” he said.

The prop­er­ty had been owned by High­way Prop­er­ty Ltd, a com­pa­ny that al­so falls un­der Pres­tige’s par­ent com­pa­ny Vic­tor E Mout­tet Ltd.

A De­cem­ber 11, 2024, Com­pa­ny Reg­istry fil­ing lists Chris­t­ian Em­manuel Mout­tet as a 25 per cent share­hold­er of Vic­tor E Mout­tet Ltd, a com­pa­ny es­tab­lished in 1958 by his fa­ther and moth­er. The char­man of Pres­tige Hold­ings is al­so a di­rec­tor of Vic­tor E Mout­tet, along with two mem­bers of his fam­i­ly.

Vic­tor E Mout­tet Ltd ac­quired Pres­tige Hold­ing Ltd in 1997.

The re­lat­ed-par­ty trans­ac­tion was out­lined in the 2024 an­nu­al re­port of Pres­tige Hold­ings.

The re­port stat­ed, “In De­cem­ber 2023, Pres­tige Hold­ings Ltd pur­chased High­way Prop­er­ties Ltd from its ul­ti­mate par­ent com­pa­ny Vic­tor E Mout­tet Ltd. Pres­tige Hold­ings Ltd ac­quired 2,999,999 shares in High­way Prop­er­ties Ltd. The main in­ter­est and as­set in the com­pa­ny was a prop­er­ty sit­u­at­ed at the cor­ner of Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way and the South­ern Main Road, val­ued at $23,250,000.”

The deal was fur­ther ex­plained in note 30 of the an­nu­al re­port, where the trans­ac­tion was list­ed as a busi­ness com­bi­na­tion.

The an­nu­al re­port stat­ed, “On 13 De­cem­ber 2023, Pres­tige Hold­ings Ltd ac­quired 100 per cent of the is­sued share cap­i­tal of High­way Prop­er­ties Ltd. The main as­set in the com­pa­ny was a prop­er­ty sit­u­at­ed at the cor­ner of Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way and the South­ern Main Road in Curepe, pre­vi­ous­ly leased by Pres­tige Hold­ings Ltd, from which three of its restau­rants op­er­ate.”

Pres­tige Hold­ings Ltd CEO Si­mon Hardy ex­plained that the com­pa­ny had tak­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pur­chase the prop­er­ty rather than con­tin­ue the pre­vi­ous lease agree­ment giv­en its sig­nif­i­cance to the group.

He told the Busi­ness Guardian, “As you know, that prop­er­ty holds three of our brands, so KFC, Piz­za and Sub­way. It is a very im­por­tant lo­ca­tion for us. It’s got great vis­i­bil­i­ty from the high­way with the amount of traf­fic pass­ing that store. It’s one of our top store lo­ca­tions. We had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ac­quire it. We don’t own a lot of prop­er­ties but it was so strate­gic, we de­cid­ed to ac­quire it.”

He ex­plained that Pres­tige felt at this time it was more vi­able to own the prop­er­ty out­right than to con­tin­ue the pre­vi­ous lease arrange­ment.

He said, “Be­cause when you lease from some­one, a land­lord could, at any mo­ment in time, de­cide they’re not in­ter­est­ed in leas­ing any­more, and you may lose a lo­ca­tion as a re­sult. So it’s to se­cure the longevi­ty at that lo­ca­tion. We de­cide to ac­quire it rather than to just con­tin­ue leas­ing it.”

Hardy said the deal had been pub­licly ven­ti­lat­ed and it it had been wide­ly re­port­ed up­on in the com­pa­ny’s an­nu­al re­port.

The an­nu­al re­port al­so not­ed that the com­pa­ny se­cured a loan to help pur­chase the prop­er­ty as the re­port stat­ed un­der the item list­ed as Loan 4, “The bor­row­ing rep­re­sents a TT dol­lar loan for $17 mil­lion at a rate of 4.8 per cent per an­num for 13 years sub­ject to month­ly in­ter­est rate re­sets. In­ter­est is payable month­ly. Prin­ci­pal is re­payable by month­ly in­stal­ments which com­menced on Jan­u­ary 1,2024. The fair val­ue based on cash flows dis­count­ed us­ing a cur­rent bor­row­ing rate of 4.8 per cent is $15,988,411 (2023: $15,241,150). The loan fa­cil­i­ty is se­cured by a mort­gage over a prop­er­ty owned by High­way Prop­er­ties Ltd.”

Hardy ex­plained it was nor­mal for the com­pa­ny to take a loan, as it had done in this case, to pur­chase a prop­er­ty.

Hardy said, “Like many busi­ness­es, we will fi­nance our ac­qui­si­tions through a mix­ture of cash, eq­ui­ty and debt. This is no dif­fer­ent. It’s just like when we bought the Trinci­ty Plaza land and de­vel­oped that prop­er­ty. That was a mix­ture of debt and eq­ui­ty. It’s en­tire­ly nor­mal in any busi­ness op­er­a­tion.”

The prop­er­ty had been sub­ject to State in­ter­est dur­ing the de­vel­op­ment of the Curepe In­ter­change project with a por­tion of the prop­er­ty be­ing ced­ed to the State to al­low the com­ple­tion of the project.

On May 9, 2019 an or­der un­der the Land Ac­qui­si­tion Act was made con­cern­ing the land. It stat­ed, “The per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, Min­istry of Works and Trans­port. is au­tho­rised to take pos­ses­sion of the par­cel of land com­pris­ing 2,100.7 square me­tres, more or less, be­ing a por­tion of the par­cel known as Lot B, sit­u­at­ed at the in­ter­sec­tion of the South­ern Main Road and the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way, Curepe, in the Ward of Tacarigua, in the Coun­ty of St. George, said to be­long now or for­mer­ly to High­way Prop­er­ty Ltd and de­scribed in the No­ti­fi­ca­tion in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gazette, Le­gal Sup­ple­ment Part B, Vol­ume 52, No. 114, dat­ed 4th Sep­tem­ber, 2018, at Item No. 1745, as Le­gal No­tice No. 181 of 2013, be­fore the for­mal vest­ing of the land in the State, and to ap­ply it to the pur­pose for which it is in­tend­ed to be put on ac­qui­si­tion.”

The Curepe In­ter­change was of­fi­cial­ly opened to the pub­lic in April 2020, with many land ac­qui­si­tion deals be­tween the state and prop­er­ty own­ers still up in the air.

The land ac­qui­si­tion fall­out was al­so men­tioned in Pres­tige’s 2024 an­nu­al re­port as it stat­ed, “Up­on ac­qui­si­tion of the com­pa­ny, re­ceiv­ables of $1,707,146 ex­ist­ed as an as­set on the com­pa­ny’s state­ment of fi­nan­cial po­si­tion. This re­lates to an amount due from the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go for land re­claimed from High­way Prop­er­ties Ltd 2021. Pres­tige Hold­ings Ltd is cur­rent­ly as­sess­ing the re­cov­er­abil­i­ty of this amount, due to the un­cer­tain­ty of the tim­ing of the re­cov­er­abil­i­ty a loss al­lowance of $1,707,146 was recog­nised on ac­qui­si­tion.”

When High­way Prop­er­ties Ltd pur­chased the prop­er­ty in 1990 it had been mea­sured at 5,490.4 square me­tres. How­ev­er, af­ter a 2021 sur­vey, the prop­er­ty was mea­sured at 3,954.2 square me­tres. That is equal to 42,562.65 square feet, which puts the price per square foot of the prop­er­ty at $543.66.