An­tho­ny Wil­son

Con­sul­tant Busi­ness Ed­i­tor

an­tho­ny.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

One of T&T’s most promi­nent busi­ness­men, Arthur Lok Jack, has stepped down as the chair­man of As­so­ci­at­ed Brands In­dus­tries Ltd (ABIL).

Speak­ing at a din­ner at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, on Sat­ur­day to cel­e­brate the 50th an­niver­sary of the group of com­pa­nies, Lok Jack said one of his three sons, Nicholas, has now been ap­point­ed ABIL chair­man.

Nicholas Lok Jack has been ABIL’s group CEO and deputy chair­man for sev­er­al years

Re­flect­ing on the fact that he turned 80 this year, Lok Jack said his new role in the group he found­ed in 1974 would be as ad­vi­sor to the new chair­man.

In his ad­dress to in­vit­ed guests, Lok Jack de­scribed ABIL as one of the largest pri­vate­ly owned op­er­a­tions in T&T and one of the largest man­u­fac­tur­ers in the re­gion. He said the best days of the group, which man­u­fac­tures choco­lates, bis­cuits and ce­re­als, are ahead of it.

Ad­dress­ing guests be­fore the an­nounce­ment of his ap­point­ment as chair­man, Nicholas Lok Jack said it seemed as though his fa­ther spent more time na­tion-build­ing and re­gion-build­ing than run­ning his own busi­ness.

Apart from chair­ing ABIL, Arthur Lok Jack served as chair­man of Guardian Hold­ings Ltd, the then named Neal & Massy Hold­ings group of com­pa­nies and BWIA and its suc­ces­sor com­pa­ny Caribbean Air­lines Ltd.

Ac­cord­ing to a ci­ta­tion on Lok Jack on the web­site of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, “He has played a piv­otal role in the trans­for­ma­tion of the eco­nom­ic land­scape of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Caribbean re­gion through his roles as the first chair­man of the TT Ex­port De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion; chair­man of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Ex­port Cred­it Com­pa­ny (now Ex­im­bank); pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion and chair­man of the Trinidad Free Zone Com­pa­ny.”

He was in­duct­ed in­to the T&T Cham­ber’s Busi­ness Hall of Fame in 2009.

As a bene­fac­tor to the de­vel­op­ment of busi­ness in T&T, the busi­ness school at UWI St Au­gus­tine is named the Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness

The ABIL group has six plants around the world, in­clud­ing two in Mal­ta, and has of­fices through­out the re­gion, in Colom­bia, Mi­a­mi and Pana­ma.

At the func­tion, Ja­maica’s PB Scott, chair­man of the Mus­son group of com­pa­nies and Se­prod, and Adam Stew­art, ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of San­dals Re­sorts In­ter­na­tion­al, paid video trib­utes to ABIL on its 50th an­niver­sary. Al­so pay­ing trib­ute to the group by video was Joe Esau, a for­mer CEO of the ANSA McAL group.