The Trinidad and To­ba­go Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion (TTSEC) has levied a fine of $39,150 on ma­jor­i­ty state-owned TSTT for fail­ing to make the time­ly dis­clo­sure of a rat­ings re­port.

In a no­tice pub­lished on the Com­mis­sion’s web­site on Wednes­day, the TTSEC said TSTT was in con­tra­ven­tion of sec­tion 64(1)(a), (b) and (c) of the Se­cu­ri­ties Act, which man­dates re­port­ing is­suers to make time­ly dis­clo­sures of ma­te­r­i­al changes.

The Com­mis­sion not­ed that TSTT re­ceived an ad­just­ment of its glob­al scale is­suer cred­it and is­sue-lev­el rat­ings from Stan­dard & Poor’s Glob­al Rat­ings ef­fec­tive Oc­to­ber 23, 2023.

The Com­mis­sion said TSTT filed a ma­te­r­i­al change re­port with the TTSEC, pub­lished a no­tice in two dai­ly news­pa­pers and filed copies of the pub­lished no­tice with the Com­mis­sion, past the re­spec­tive due dates.

The Se­cu­ri­ties Act man­dates re­port­ing is­suers to file no­tices of ma­te­r­i­al change with the TTSEC with­in three day of the oc­cur­rence of the change. The no­tice is re­quired to dis­close the na­ture and sub­stance of the ma­te­r­i­al change and to be cer­ti­fied by a se­nior of­fi­cer of the com­pa­ny.

Re­port­ing is­suers are al­so re­quired to pub­lish no­tices of ma­te­r­i­al change in two dai­ly news­pa­pers of gen­er­al cir­cu­la­tion in T&T with­in sev­en days of the oc­cur­rence of the ma­te­r­i­al change.

The Com­mis­sion said it ad­vised TSTT that it was in con­tra­ven­tion of Sec­tion 64(1)(a), (b), and (c) of the Act “by fail­ing to file and pub­lish the afore­men­tioned doc­u­ments, re­spec­tive­ly, with­in the pre­scribed time­frames.”

TSTT ac­knowl­edged that it was in con­tra­ven­tion of the Se­cu­ri­ties Act and en­tered in­to a set­tle­ment agree­ment with the staff of the TTSEC.

The Com­mis­sion said the set­tle­ment agree­ment was ap­proved by the set­tle­ment pan­el and the board of com­mis­sion­ers, with TSTT be­ing or­dered to pay to the TTSEC an ad­min­is­tra­tive fine of $39,150 with­in 28 days of the mak­ing of the or­der. The or­der is dat­ed Ju­ly 29.

The Com­mis­sion said its or­der shall be pub­lished in the T&T Gazette and post­ed on the TTSEC’s web­site and that a no­tice of the post­ing shall be pub­lished in two dai­ly news­pa­pers of gen­er­al cir­cu­la­tion in T&T.

TSTT is 51-per cent owned by Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd (NEL), a pub­licly list­ed in­vest­ment hold­ing com­pa­ny of the T&T. Ca­ble & Wire­less (West In­dies), (C&W), now Lib­er­ty Group Latin Amer­i­ca, owns 49 per cent of TSTT.

Ac­cord­ing to NEL’s 2023 an­nu­al re­port, “Fol­low­ing its No­vem­ber 2014 ac­qui­si­tion of Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (FLOW), C&W agreed to the sus­pen­sion of its share­hold­er rights in TSTT un­der the share­hold­ers’ agree­ment dat­ed De­cem­ber 20, 1989. C&W’s in­ter­est in TSTT has been avail­able for sale since the di­vest­ment agree­ment of March 20, 2015.”

On the NEL web­site, TSTT is de­scribed as “T&T’s largest and most ad­vanced provider of in­te­grat­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions so­lu­tions to the res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial mar­kets. It pro­vides cut­ting-edge, so­lu­tions with the most com­plete telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions prod­uct of­fer­ing, in­clud­ing fixed line ser­vices on the largest dig­i­tal net­work in the coun­try, mo­bile ser­vices on a fre­quen­cy di­vi­sion du­plex (FDD) LTE 4G net­work and fixed wire­less broad­band ser­vices on a time di­vi­sion du­plex (TDD) LTE net­work.

“High-speed in­ter­net and high de­f­i­n­i­tion TV with a next-gen­er­a­tion fi­bre op­tic telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions back­bone us­ing fi­bre-to-the-home GPON tech­nol­o­gy, is pro­vid­ed through TSTT’s whol­ly-owned sub­sidiary, Am­plia Com­mu­ni­ca­tions.”

TSTT ac­quired 100 per cent share­hold­ing of Massy Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Ltd on Ju­ly 31, 2017 for $215 mil­lion, which was au­dit­ed and as­sessed to be $42 mil­lion less than the ‘net book val­ue’ of the as­sets.