Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

For­mer banker Nigel Ro­mano is be­ing re­placed as the chair­man of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Nipdec) ef­fec­tive to­day, and he will be re­placed as chair­man of pub­licly list­ed Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM) next month.

Ro­mano will be re­placed by Nipdec’s deputy chair Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards, who is the prin­ci­pal med­ical of­fi­cer at the Min­istry of Health.

“She was the deputy chair and best choice to suc­ceed him,” an in­formed source told Guardian Me­dia.

Ro­mano will hold on as chair­man of the NFM un­til Sep­tem­ber 27, when the ma­jor­i­ty state-owned en­ti­ty is sched­uled to host its post­poned an­nu­al meet­ing.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands he will be re­placed by the for­mer chair­man of ex­porTT, Ash­meer Mo­hammed.

Ro­mano con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that he will be chair­man of NFM un­til Sep­tem­ber 27 and then ex­it the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“I will be the chair un­til the an­nu­al meet­ing in Sep­tem­ber 2024. Thank you,” he said.

Ro­mano’s ex­it from the state en­ti­ties comes amid re­cent ten­sion be­tween the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try and NFM, which led to the post­pone­ment of its an­nu­al meet­ing, orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled for June 27.

NFM’s ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er is Na­tion­al En­ter­prise Ltd (NEL), a pub­licly list­ed ma­jor­i­ty state-owned in­vest­ment hold­ing com­pa­ny, which owns 51 per cent of NFM's is­sued share cap­i­tal.

While NEL falls un­der the purview of the Min­istry of Fi­nance, NFM falls un­der the purview of the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that de­spite re­quests by the Min­istry of Trade for NFM to sub­mit board min­utes, as most state en­ter­pris­es are re­quired to do to their line Min­istry, NFM has not done so for well over a year.

In ad­di­tion, last year the Min­istry wrote to all en­ti­ties un­der its port­fo­lio ask­ing them to freeze salaries for ex­ec­u­tives.

In­stead, NFM re­spond­ed that it re­ceived le­gal ad­vice from Claude Den­bow SC, which in­di­cat­ed the com­pa­ny is un­der no le­gal oblig­a­tion to ei­ther pro­vide min­utes or to freeze salaries as they have their own pol­i­cy.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that it was the com­pa­ny’s de­ci­sion to host its 51st an­nu­al meet­ing, which trig­gered a re­sponse from the State.

The share­hold­er no­tice had list­ed five items for dis­cus­sion at the meet­ing, which in­clud­ed ap­prov­ing a fi­nal div­i­dend pay­ment of $0.10 per share and re­ceiv­ing and adopt­ing the con­sol­i­dat­ed au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the fi­nan­cial year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2023.

It was Cor­po­ra­tion Sole, through NEL, which caused the NFM to post­pone the AGM.

“Share­hold­ers will be ad­vised of the new date in a sub­se­quent an­nounce­ment. NFM deeply re­grets the in­con­ve­nience caused and looks for­ward to see­ing all of you at our resched­uled meet­ing,” ac­cord­ing to a no­tice from NFM, an­nounc­ing the post­pone­ment, which was post­ed on the stock ex­change.

Al­so on the agen­da was the re-elec­tion and elec­tion of all NFM di­rec­tors, in­clud­ing chair­man Nigel Ro­mano, Son­ja Voisin, Karen Shaw, Aliyah Hamel Smith, Ross Alexan­der, Shane Cor­reia, Joanne Salazar, An­nalean In­niss, Varun Ma­haraj, and San­jiv Sookoo.

Ro­mano told Guardian Me­dia on Fri­day that NEL re­quest­ed that the meet­ing be post­poned for more con­sul­ta­tion on the nom­i­nees on the board for re-elec­tion.

He said that the AGM will have to take place be­fore Sep­tem­ber.

Asked about ten­sion, he an­swered: “Every­thing is okay with Cor­po­ra­tion Sole.”

In the wake of the AGM be­ing post­poned, one di­rec­tor Aliyah Hamel-Smith ten­dered her res­ig­na­tion one day lat­er.

Ac­cord­ing to its first quar­ter re­sults for 2024, the NFM an­nounced a prof­it af­ter tax of $10.2 mil­lion for the three-month pe­ri­od end­ing March 31, 2024.

"We achieved a 14 per cent in­crease in gross prof­it of $37.2 mil­lion, up from $32.5 mil­lion in 2023. A re­duc­tion in fi­nance costs al­so con­tributed to an in­crease in prof­it be­fore tax­a­tion to $14.5 mil­lion,” Ro­mano said in the com­pa­ny’s unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­sults for the pe­ri­od end­ed March 31, 2024.

NFM dropped its re­tail price on flour items in Ju­ly 2023 by an av­er­age of 10 per cent. This price drop came short­ly af­ter oth­er flour sup­pli­ers Nu­trim­ix and Sheik Lisha an­nounced price re­duc­tions as well.