CLF SHAREHOLDERS TO TANCOO: FIRE LIQUIDATOR, STOP 'FIRE SALE' OF TRINCITY MALL...And Make The Indigenous Company Great Again By Returning It To Rightful ShareholdersBy SIEWDATH PERSAD - Journalist & Excutive Producer of UnwindTT
PORT OF SPAIN, TRINIDAD (June 26, 2025): FINANCE Minister Davendranath Tancoo is being called upon to immediately intervene to stop the impending "fire sale" of Trincity Mall, Tru Valu Supermarket chain and other prime CL Financial (CLF) assets by liquidator Grant Thornton.
A group of CLF shareholders, who have requested anonymity, are also appealing to Tancoo to "remove CL Financial (CLF) liquidator Grant Thornton and revert to the Shareholders Agreement."
The Cabinet approved Shareholders Agreement was formulated under the People's Partnership government by then Finance Minister Larry Howai following collaboration with the main shareholders in 2015. Howai was yesterday (June 25) appointed as Governor of the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago (CBTT).
CLF was tossed into liquidation by former PNM Finance Minister Colm Imbert in 2017, with court-appointed joint liquidators given eight months to hasten the task of paying off creditors while protecting the interest of shareholders and assets of the company and its subsidiaries.
A spokesperson for the CLF shareholders group told UNWIND TT: "The liquidators were given eight months to do a job. This has been stretched into eight years with the liquidators feasting on fees, commissions, salaries and perks, while incurring other significant costs (legal fees, consultancy fees etc) to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. And a significant portion this has to be paid in scarce US currency.
"All this money could have instead been directed towards payment to reduce the debt balance. This ill-advised insane solution was Imbert's bright idea to deal with repayment of the CLF/CLICO bailout debt to the government."
The bailout was instituted in 2009 under the administration of then Prime Minister Patrick Manning, in the wake of the 2008 global finance crisis.
Grant Thornton's liquidator Mark Byers has travelled first class from the Bahamas to Trinidad earlier this week and is being accomodated in fine style at CLF's expense, for the duration of his stay in the country to execute the "fire sale" of the Trincity Mall Property, stated the spokesperson for the CLF shareholder group.
The group is urging Tancoo "to carefully scrutinize the dissipation of its Trincity Mall Property asset via the impending fire sale to a local consortium comprising a clip of PNM financiers, to ensure that shareholders are not being short-changed or robbed of value to the tune of $225 million."
CLF is the parent company for HCL, which owns the Trincity Mall Property.
The Trincity Mall Property, which comprised the mall buildings and 53 acres of surrounding lands, were valued at $730 million by Terra Caribbean Limited in 2020. A subsequent valuation by Linden Scott & Assiciates coughed up a figure $620 million as at December 2023, which raised lots of eyebrows.
The shareholders are contending that $620 million must have been the valuation for the mall buildings alone, which does not include the vast surrounding 53-acre spread of prime lands. They are questioning how this prime property could have lost value to the tune of a whopping $110 million less than the earlier Terra Caribbean valuation of $730 million in five years under the handling of the liquidator.
Even worse is that the liquidator is now rushing to dispose of the entire property for $505 million offered by the consortium, which represents a further erosion of value amounting to $225 million ($730 million discounted to $505 million).
It is further understood that an initial approach was made to RBC Limited (Royal Bank) for a loan to finance the mall/estate purchase transaction. However, upon examination of all documentations and pursuant to its own due diligence, RBC reportedly declined to involve itself in that deal. It therefore turned down the loan application. The bank opted to safeguard against reputational damage associated with facilitating a transaction that had loads of question marks written all over it.
The CLF shareholders group said they have knowledge that the consortium recently approached state-controlled First Citizens Bank (FCB) for a loan to facilitate the mall property purchase. They now want FCB Chairman Anthony Smart and the bank's board of directors to also scrutinize all details and bank personnel associated with underwriting any loan to be processed for the impending hugely discounted purchase of the Trincity Mall property.
They said the management of HCL, which has an existing well serviced mortgage on the said mall with FCB, had approached the bank to renegotiate the above, at the market rate of interest being charged by the bank, but was rejected. The CLF shareholders said they were reliably informed that the consortium approached the very same FCB which hastily facilitated processing of a loan for purchase of the said Trincity Mall Property at a significantly lower interest rate than that being charged on the HCL mortgage.
"This shows favouritism by the state controlled bank and brings into question the longstanding relationship between HCL and FCB," a spokesperson for the CLF shareholders group said.
According to the spokesperson, "the question now is who is really benefitting from the sale of the Trincity Mall Property which has been discounted by a whopping $225 million? The only beneficiary of this deal are: 1. the buyer who is getting a steal of a deal; 2. the liquidator who is getting a significant commission on the sale as well as negotiation fees; 3. the lawyers on both sides who are engaged with doing the deal; and 4. consultants.
"This is clearly a case of liquidator abuse of shareholder value and leeching off CL financial for the past eight years. The shareholders view is that enough is enough. The new Prime Minister and Cabinet must put a stop to this insanity now and rescue CLF from the bondage of the liquidator and Imbert's stroke of madness.
"It is high time to put right what amounts to patent rape of the CLF assets facilitated by the previous government. The shareholders are willing to work with the new government to restore CLF and bring back the entrepreneurial benefit with a new gereration of this group primed and poised to contribute to the benefit and growth of the Trinidad and Tobago economy."
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