anthony.wilson@guardian.co.tt
Massy Holdings chairman, Robert Riley, has admitted that the Port-of-Spain-based investment holding company pays its 276 foreign resident shareholders—those shareholders of the company not resident in T&T, Jamaica, or Barbados—in US dollars.
And in a circular letter to Massy’s shareholders—which is dated September 3, but was published on the website of the T&T Stock Exchange on September 13—Riley said the board of the company was committed “to maintain the existing payment arrangements to its current foreign resident shareholders only.”
That policy decision of the Massy board, which was made effective August 7, means its T&T shareholders will continue to receive their dividends in TT dollars, and Barbados and Jamaican shareholders of the company will continue to receive their dividend payments in Barbadian and Jamaican dollars, respectively. “Future foreign resident shareholders (ie, shareholders resident outside of Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, and Jamaica after August 7, 2024) will be paid in TT dollars (or Jamaican dollars if their shares are listed on the JSE) and not US dollars,” stated the Riley circular letter, which he said was written on behalf of the company’s board.
Massy pays its foreign shareholders through the company’s registrar and paying agent, the Trinidad and Tobago Central Depository Ltd (TTCD). The Massy circular letter was written, Riley said, “due to recent public concerns regarding how and to whom Massy makes US-dollar dividend payments.”
Public concerns about the group’s spending of scarce foreign exchange were first raised publicly by Angelique Parisot-Potter, the former Massy Holdings executive vice president of business integrity and group general counsel, in a statement she read out at the company’s 100th annual meeting at the Hilton Trinidad and Conference Centre on December 18, 2023.
At the annual meeting, she raised the specific issue of Massy’s spending of scarce foreign exchange on an executive management programme in Fort Myers, Florida, that involves “bizarre rituals” and “highly dubious activities.”
But, at the meeting, Parisot-Potter also referenced a 13-page document she had sent to the Massy board in November 2023, in which she detailed her concerns about US-dollar dividend payments, as well as the executive management programme along with single-source procurement and conflicts of interest.
Massy made two dividend payments in 2023, totalling TT$0.1583 (15.83 cents), comprising payments of $0.0315 on June 15, 2023, and $0.1268 on December 18, 2023. With an issued share capital of 1,979,384,540 shares, all of the company’s 12,000 plus shareholders would have received a total of $313,336,572.60 in 2023. The foreign resident shareholders would have received an estimated US$580,320 ($3,917,160), according to Guardian Media calculations.
In the Riley circular letter, Massy said before 2016, shareholders resident in other countries were paid in the currency of their respective countries or in a currency that they could utilise when they received their dividend cheques.
Before 2016, “when access to foreign exchange became much more limited in T&T,” dividend payments to the group’s foreign shareholders came from the TTCD sourcing foreign exchange from local commercial banks. After December 2017, Massy itself sourced the foreign exchange to pay its foreign shareholders.
