JAMT shareholders approve share options for directors, staff
Published:Friday | March 4, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Jamaican Teas shareholders on Wednesday approved a new share option plan for directors and a share-purchase plan for staff that will require the issue of 16 million new stock units in the company.
The issues will be done in two tranches by June 2011, the company said.
The options are excercisable within five years.
The first eight-million tranche of the issue is for the share option plan for which the exercise price is J$7 up to 2016. Such plans are often crafted as incentive for company executives to produce results that then feed into the company's stock market performance.
The JAMT stock has traded within a range of J$3.37 to J$4.45 since its listing in June 2010.
The purchase plan for staff will value the shares at current market price less 10 per cent on the day the option is exercised.
The stock traded Thursday at J$3.87.
John Mahfood, chief executive officer of Jamaican Teas, says the offer to five directors - comprising himself, father and chairman Adeeb Mahfood, and three other board members - is to ensure that the company does well.
"The directors cannot take up the offer until we are trading at J$7, so we will have to ensure that our company does well," he said.
"The staff was offered shares when we just went public; this is just continuing what we started."
Along with the eight-million share offer, which begins in 2016, staff members will be offered a three-year interest-free loan to purchase the stock, Mahfood said.
Jamaican Teas has issued shares of 167.879 million, with John and Adeeb each holding 64.189 million shares.