A Massy Hold­ings ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent used the group’s 100th an­nu­al meet­ing yes­ter­day to raise is­sues about the com­pa­ny’s spend­ing of scarce for­eign ex­change on an ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment pro­gramme in Fort My­ers, Flori­da that in­volves “bizarre rit­u­als” and “high­ly du­bi­ous ac­tiv­i­ties.”

Angélique Parisot-Pot­ter is the ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of busi­ness in­tegri­ty and group gen­er­al coun­sel at Massy Hold­ings.

When Massy chair­man Robert Ri­ley opened the floor for ques­tions at the Hilton Trinidad an­nu­al meet­ing, Parisot-Pot­ter was first in line to raise is­sues.

Read­ing from a pre­pared text, she said she was oblig­ed to speak about sig­nif­i­cant gov­er­nance and fidu­cia­ry con­cerns, as de­tailed in her 13-page doc­u­ment, in­clud­ing au­dio ev­i­dence, pre­vi­ous­ly shared with the group’s CEO, Ger­vase Warn­er.

“Among oth­er mat­ters, one alarm­ing is­sue is the so-called ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship pro­gramme, which has been present in our or­gan­i­sa­tion for over a decade. This pro­gramme in­volves fre­quent trav­el to Fort My­ers, Flori­da, and week­ly com­mit­ments for over a year at a cost per par­tic­i­pant of tens of thou­sands of US dol­lars for which there were over 11 par­tic­i­pants last year, alone.

“Their bizarre rit­u­als in­clude that they can train Massy em­ploy­ees to com­mu­ni­cate with the dead and that at­ten­dees can self heal with ‘white light en­er­gy’.

“This is a mat­ter of grave con­cern to share­hold­ers be­cause the cou­ple lead­ing this pro­gramme ap­pear to ex­ert dis­pro­por­tion­ate in­flu­ence over our ex­ec­u­tive team.

“In the midst of a for­eign ex­change cri­sis, Massy can­not be spend­ing scarce re­sources on high­ly du­bi­ous ac­tiv­i­ties, and con­tracts award­ed can­not be pushed through with­out pru­dent due process. This is not just a gov­er­nance is­sue; it’s a bla­tant dis­re­gard for share­hold­er in­ter­ests. I urge the board to take this, and the oth­er is­sues I have raised, se­ri­ous­ly.”

In re­sponse to a What­sApp ques­tion from Guardian Me­dia af­ter the meet­ing, Parisot-Pot­ter said she had no op­tion but to raise the is­sue with the share­hold­ers of the com­pa­ny be­cause she had raised “these mat­ters in­ter­nal­ly with no res­o­lu­tion forth­com­ing.” She al­so ex­pressed doubt that the Massy board had re­ceived her 13-page let­ter.

Re­spond­ing to the group ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent, Ri­ley said her let­ter was be­ing tak­en very se­ri­ous­ly as it is be­ing re­viewed and in­ves­ti­gat­ed. Ri­ley said he hoped those is­sues could be re­solved.

Warn­er: It’s the se­cret

of our suc­cess

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia in in­ter­views af­ter the an­nu­al meet­ing, Warn­er, the Massy Hold­ings pres­i­dent and CEO, said the Port-of-Spain-based group spent be­tween US$500,000 and US$1 mil­lion a year on the ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship train­ing in Fort My­ers, Flori­da.

“But we spend a lot more on oth­er train­ing pro­grammes as well. We have a very heavy train­ing and de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme as we lead 13,000 em­ploy­ees. When you think of $1 mil­lion or $2 or $3 mil­lion in the broad bud­get that we have for peo­ple de­vel­op­ment, we think it is worth the in­vest­ment. We see the re­sults in our bot­tom line from mak­ing in­vest­ments like that.”

Asked whether it would be pos­si­ble to fly the man­age­ment train­ers to T&T, in­stead of fly­ing ex­ec­u­tives and di­rec­tors to Fort My­ers in Flori­da, Warn­er said that has hap­pened as well.

“Fly­ing four or five peo­ple to Fort My­ers for four days, four times in a year is not go­ing to af­fect the bot­tom line of the Massy group of com­pa­nies. But it will make a huge dif­fer­ence in who those lead­ers turn out to be for the Massy group, out of their ex­pe­ri­ences.”

Dur­ing the an­nu­al meet­ing, Warn­er ad­mit­ted that al­though the group earns a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of its for­eign ex­change needs, it is not a net for­eign ex­change earn­er.

In one in­ter­view, Warn­er was asked whether that means some per­cent­age of Massy’s for­eign ex­change needs come from the lo­cal com­mer­cial banks, which may mean that the group is get­ting for­eign ex­change for the lead­er­ship train­ing pro­gramme that could go to oth­er busi­ness­es.

“I am not sure I am fol­low­ing your log­ic be­cause we spend mil­lions up­on mil­lions of dol­lars in for­eign ex­change on an an­nu­al ba­sis. This is a drop in the buck­et. Part of why we are able to raise for­eign ex­change in this coun­try is through the per­for­mance of our busi­ness­es. And there is a di­rect link­age to the per­for­mance of our busi­ness­es and the in­vest­ment in these train­ing pro­grammes,” said Warn­er. Es­pe­cial­ly the train­ing pro­gramme that formed the ba­sis of Parisot-Pot­ter’s com­plaint, he said.

“So I would ar­gue that it is ac­tu­al­ly a net gen­er­a­tor of for­eign ex­change be­cause we make this in­vest­ment and then we are able to get our ex­port-earn­ing busi­ness­es to per­form bet­ter, to earn us more for­eign ex­change,” Warn­er added.

He said many of the group’s lead­ers and some board mem­bers have at­tend­ed the pro­gramme.

“It is deep work to have us go in and un­der­stand where some of our au­to­mat­ic re­ac­tions as peo­ple come from,” he said, adding that he brought the com­pa­ny to Massy’s at­ten­tion as he had an ex­pe­ri­ence with it be­fore he joined the Port-of-Spain-based group.

“Typ­i­cal­ly, there are things that have hap­pened to us in our past that are trig­gers for us. And our minds run these re­ac­tions all the time. When we can slow down and put that au­to­mat­ic mind­ful trig­ger to the back­ground and have ac­cess to the best ver­sion of our­self–we call our cen­tre, spir­it or soul–you find that who we can show up and be with one an­oth­er comes from a very dif­fer­ent place,” said Warn­er.

He said Parisot-Pot­ter would not be the first ex­ec­u­tive who has had dif­fi­cul­ty in a pro­gramme like this.

“We think a part of our se­cret at Massy is that we are will­ing to do this kind of work as lead­ers. It is the kind of work that we have done that al­lows us to have the re­sults the com­pa­ny shows. That is be­cause cul­ture eats strat­e­gy for break­fast,” said Warn­er, adding that build­ing the con­nec­tion and trust with oth­er lead­ers, em­ploy­ees, cus­tomers and com­mu­ni­ties is a big part of Massy’s suc­cess.

In its fi­nan­cial year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2023, Massy’s rev­enue in­creased by 15 per cent to $14.19 bil­lion and its prof­it be­fore tax was up by 23 per cent at $1.22 bil­lion. Its af­ter-tax prof­it de­clined by 5.2 per cent to $812.9 mil­lion as a re­sult of the im­pact of dis­con­tin­ued busi­ness­es in 2022.