Big payday for Lascelles shareholders
Published:Wednesday | December 22, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Lascelles deMercado and Company Limited will give a New Year gift of $1 billion to ordinary shareholders, but only a million-plus of the largesse is expected to stay in Jamaica.
On Monday, Lascelles said in a stock market filing that it would pay out J$111 per share to holders of its 96 million stock units - J$5.50 of interim dividend and a special distribution of J$5.50 - amounting to J$1.056 billion.
But with Trinidad controlled CL Financial group and its subsidiaries holding 86.89 per cent of the shares, the majority payment of J$917.56 million will flow to the twin-island republic's government.
The payment, which will be made January 13 to shareholders on record at January 3, brings total dividend declared year to date to J$16.50. A payment of J$528 million, J$5.50 per share, was made in February.
The company made similar levels of payment before in 2009 when it declared dividend of J$6 per share plus a special distribution of J$8 per share, for a total payout of J$1.34b, but its more liberal policy was put in place only after its acquisition by CL Financial, whose takeover of the company in 2008 was noted as one of the biggest stock market deals in Jamaica.
Board influx
Six months after the deal closed, over-leveraged and illiquid, CL Financial crashed, prompting a rescue by the Trinidad government in January 2009. Since then, the Lascelles board has been in upheaval, with a revolving door of directors. The last change was in October when Gerard Yetming was appointed chairman to replace Dr Shafeek Sultan-Khan.
Still, the board reconfigurations, on the face of it, have had no pass-through effect to the conglomerate's businesses whose performance remain strong.
Throughout, William 'Billy' McConnell, who has an established record as a profitmaker, has remained the managing director, a position that Trinidad has signalled is unlikely to change.
Lascelles made J$2.56 billion of profit in 2009, and J$3.1 billion at yearend September 2010. The spirits conglomerate's other top shareholders include NCB Insurance Company, National Insurance Fund, Scotia DBG Investments, and FCIB Barbados Limited.
Lascelles in the past year has grown from a J$34 billion to a J$38 billion company by assets, the majority, J$16 billion of which resides in its spirits business J Wray and Nephew group; another J$12 billion is investments, while the third largest business segment is general insurance which represents J$6 billion of assets.