TRAINING INSTITUTE iCreate Limited plans to slash costs by one-third to cope with the COVID-19 outbreak and reduce losses highlighted by its auditors. The company needs to shed costs, including $12.5 million in bank overdrafts as at December, to...
Digicel Group chairman Denis O’Brien has put up the telecoms regional headquarters on the Kingston waterfront as collateral under a debt deal with bondholders. The Digicel founder committed to putting up US$50 million – half in cash and the rest in...
JAMAICA’S LARGEST insurance conglomerate, Sagicor Group, says it can weather a three-month shutdown of the country without too big a financial impact, but the longer the health crisis lasts, the more risks the company faces. Sagicor has gamed out...
TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMPANY Digicel Group announced a halt to interest payments to bondholders for 30 days, which led the rating agency Fitch to downgrade its bonds to ‘C’. Digicel defended its move as an allowed measure, saying the delay comes...
GUEST HOUSE operator Shelly-Ann Johnson is looking to stranded visitors to fill rooms that are being emptied by travel restrictions to stem the spread of the coronavirus. “We want to be a beacon of hope for travellers currently in the island,”...
Michael Riley, who sells vape pens within the burgeoning cannabis trade in Negril, holds a cash card that provides him with flexibility, but only to a certain degree. He doesn’t have a bank account, but uses ePay, a Mastercard-branded cash card...
J amaica’s central bank sealed over US$41.5 million ($5.8 billion) worth of currency swaps with banks and dealers, transactions that were introduced to address volatility in the foreign exchange market. The Bank of Jamaica’s, BOJ’s, overall...
Key Insurance Company directors voted to accept the takeover offer from the GraceKennedy conglomerate to acquire majority stake in the entity, albeit at a steep discount on the stock’s trading price. The GK offer, priced at $2.01 per share, was set...
Brokerage firms rate the TransJamaican Highway, TJH, initial public offering of shares as a buy, with expectations that the stock price will rise in the short term. That’s despite disclosures in the IPO prospectus indicating the toll operator was...
Proven Investments Limited will now be going after US$50 million, in its pending offer of new shares in the company, saying the recalibrated target was set after feedback from the market. Sagicor Investments Jamaica Limited will co-arrange and...
S tarbucks plans to introduce Jamaica high mountain coffee in local stores, a less pricey bean grown in a key region outside the famous Blue Mountains. Experts say it will nudge coffee exports and raise the profile of high mountain coffee, but is...
NCB Financial Group Limited, NCBFG, is taking steps to enter Guyana, likely through its investment banking unit. The Jamaican banking conglomerate has been eyeing a deal to finance oil development in Guyana, just as the South American country and...
Women are entering the formal job market at nearly twice the pace of men, the latest Statistical Institute of Jamaica data indicates. “It is a trend that we are seeing,” said Dr Natalee Simpson, the director of surveys at Statin, during the...
J amaican bunkering company West Indies Petroleum, WIP, which holds the rights to sell Castrol lubricant oil to five Caribbean countries, has appointed a local distributor in Guyana. WIP has held the distributorship for the marine and energy...
First Rock Capital feted investors at one of its development sites in the upscale ‘Golden Triangle’ in Kingston on Thursday, where the start-up private equity company, which is preparing to go public and list on the stock market, also announced...
Key Insurance directors continue to mull options for raising capital, after placing plans for a rights issue on hold. CEO Sandra Masterton confirmed to the Financial Gleaner that “the resolution to vote for the rights issue was withdrawn” and that...
Investors in Proven Investments Limited on Wednesday morning witnessed an apparent hundredfold rise in the share price, which would have rocketed the company’s market capitalisation to US$25 billion, or nearly twice the GDP output of Jamaica, based...
Banking conglomer-ate Scotia Group Jamaica, SGJ, says the deal to sell its insurance arm to Sagicor soured because both parties could not find a sweet spot in the follow-on distribution deal that would have emerged. “The sale would not make sense...
Shares in Sagicor Financial Corporation, SFC, were suspended in three markets this week to fast-track two deals and the insurance company’s shares trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange, TSX. Small shareholders in SFC will get their holdings...
Brokers expect the Mailpac stock to increase by around 40 per cent in price in the short run, once the shares list on the market. The initial public offering for Mailpac Group Limited, a courier company, comes to market today, Friday, at $1 per...
The Gilinski Group of Colombia will pay US$797 million for a two-thirds stake in CIBC FirstCaribbean, while Canadian bank CIBC will keep roughly one-quarter and the minority shareholders will hold the balance, according to statements from CIBC....
Jamaica’s top banking conglomerate, NCB Financial Group, plans to enter into new markets as part of its five-year growth aspirations. The bank, which has been growing through acquisition, racked up another year of record profit for the fiscal...
The Jamaican operations should have been the larger component of a US$240 million deal to sell Scotiabank’s life insurance operations in two regional markets to Sagicor Financial Group. But on Friday, Sagicor Financial announced the cancellation...
Jobs are on the rise across Jamaica and unemployment is at a low 7.8 per cent, but the head of the Statistical Institute of Jamaica, Statin, fears the slowdown of the global economy might cut into the gains and reduce the pace of job growth in...
The demerging of its lumber division from its soaps could lead to a dip in the Blue Power stock price initially, company directors told shareholders in the explanatory circular released this week. Blue Power Group directors have formally...
