Share­hold­ers of Agos­ti­ni's Ltd will be asked to change the name of the com­pa­ny at its an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing to be held on Feb­ru­ary 13.

The share­hold­ers are go­ing "to con­sid­er and if throught fit, ap­prove a change to the com­pa­ny's name" to Agos­ti­ni Ltd.

The mo­tion to change the com­pa­ny's name is the on­ly item of spe­cial busi­ness to be con­sid­ered at the an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing, which is sched­uled to be held at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain.

The pro­pos­al to change the com­pa­ny's name is con­tained in the no­tice of the meet­ing in Agos­ti­ni's Ltd 2024 an­nu­al re­port.

The no­tice out­lines that the change of name of the com­pa­ny is be­ing made "pur­suant to sec­tion 214(1)" of T&T's Com­pa­nies Act.

Sec­tion 214(1) states: "Sub­ject to sec­tions 216 and 217, the ar­ti­cles of a com­pa­ny may, by spe­cial res­o­lu­tion, be amend­ed—

(a) to change its name..."

Sec­tion 216 of the Com­pa­nies Act al­lows hold­ers of dif­fer­ent class­es of shares to vote sep­a­rate­ly on pro­pos­als to amend the ar­ti­cles.

Sec­tion 217 man­dates that af­ter the pro­pos­al to amend the name of the com­pa­ny is adopt­ed un­der sec­tion 214, "ar­ti­cles of amend­ment in the pre­scribed form shall be de­liv­ered to the Reg­is­trar."

The Agos­ti­ni's share­hold­ers will be asked to ap­point Car­o­line Toni Sir­ju-Ram­nar­ine and Nicholas Sinanan, who both joined the Agos­ti­ni's board in No­vem­ber last year. Both are el­i­gi­ble for re-elec­tion.

The share­hold­ers will al­so be asked to elect two di­rec­tors who are re­tir­ing by ro­ta­tion and have of­fered them­selves for re-elec­tion: Nicholas Gomez and Joan­na Banks.

The an­nu­al re­port dis­clos­es that Su­per­pharm Ltd, a sub­sidiary of Agos­ti­ni's, paid Massy $22 mil­lion to ac­quire ten phar­ma­cies lo­cat­ed in Massy Stores.

Su­per­pharm will be rent­ing the square footage of the ar­eas of the ten phra­ma­cies in ac­cor­dance with lease arrange­ments, ac­cord­ing to the an­nu­al re­port.

That trans­ac­tion closed on Sep­tem­ber 28, 2024.

The an­nu­al re­port al­so dis­clos­es that Su­per­pharm paid the own­ers of Lin­da's Bak­ery con­sid­er­a­tion of $5.5 mil­lion in April 2024 for the right to use the brand name Lin­da's, the fix­tures, fit­tings and equip­ment of the busi­ness, in­ven­to­ry, the ben­e­fit of busi­ness con­tracts, busi­ness in­for­ma­tion, records and the ven­dor's rights against third par­ties.

The re­port re­veals, as well, that Agos­ti­ni's paid $156.41 mil­lion (US$23.17 mil­lion) to ac­quire 100 per cent of a Ja­maican phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal dis­tri­bi­tion com­pa­ny called Health Brands Ltd. That trans­ac­tion closed in Au­gust 2023.

The re­port of the Agos­ti­ni's chair­man, Chris­t­ian Mout­tet, flagged the dif­fi­cul­ty in ob­tain­ing for­eign ex­change, say­ing the is­sue has be­come more acute in re­cent times.

"This re­quires us to ap­ply a bal­anced ap­proach to our in­vest­ment cri­te­ria, where we seek su­pe­ri­or share­hold­er re­turns, as well as in­vest­ments that can scale re­gion­al­ly and gen­er­ate new for­eign ex­change rev­enue streams," said Mout­tet.