BS&T companies to amalgamate
Published:Friday | September 16, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Barbados Shipping & Trading Company Limited and BS&T Holdings Limited have agreed to amalgamate operations.
BS&T Holdings is the vehicle through which the Neal & Massy conglomerate holds its shares in the trading company, which it acquired four years ago.
A special meeting to approve the merger, already signed off on by the boards of both companies, is scheduled for Monday at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre in St Michael.
BS&T Holdings owns 97.2 per cent of BS&T's outstanding shares and has already voted them in favour of the new arrangement, according to a notice posted on the company's website.
Neal & Massy Holdings Limited will become "the sole shareholder of the amalgamated company" once the transaction is approved, it said.
The planned merger follows efforts by BS&T to curb losses from underperforming businesses. The trading company has shed Warren Motors but is still writing off losses from that operation, and is in talks "with several interested parties and potential investors to inject capital to improve performance and refresh" Almond Resorts Inc hotel properties.
Almond is classified as an associated company of BS&T, whose holdings amount to 46.8 per cent of the tourism business.
"The special path forward with each property will depend on the negotiations currently under way. These transactions are likely to generate losses or impairments to BS&T's carrying values, the magnitudes of which are dependent on the outcome of negotiations," the company said in a note to shareholders co-signed by chairman Gervase Warner and managing director G. Anthony King, and appended to the June nine-month financial results published August 10.
BS&T at June held B$1.25 billion of assets. It reported a cash deficit of B$7.76 million.