MacLureAndrew Green, Staff Reporter
The offer by the Barbados Mutual Life Assurance Society (the Mutual) to take over Life of Barbados (LoB), poses no threat to the interests of Life of Jamaica (LoJ), says LoJ president and Chief Executive Officer, Maxine MacLure.
The Mutual has made an offer to LoB shareholders to acquire all the shares in its sister Barbados insurance company. This comes after the Mutual upped its LoB shareholding above 25 per cent, triggering a legal requirement that it make an offer to buy out all the other shareholders.
"The events occurring in Barbados pose absolutely no danger whatsoever to Life of Jamaica shareholders, employees or policyholders," Ms. MacLure said. She was speaking at a LoJ sales awards function at Le Meridien Jamaica Pegasus Hotel on Thursday.
A consortium consisting of Barbados Mutual Life Assurance Society and Life of Barbados bought FINSAC's 76 per cent shareholding in LoJ for US$41.2 million (J$1.95 billion) in December last year.
The Mutual, "one of the major players in the Barbados insurance industry and who now control our company," on February 15 got first refusal to acquire 10 per cent of the shares in LoB, she said. "These shares became suddenly available because the owners, CIBC West Indies Holdings, decided they no longer wanted to own them."
The Mutual, already owned 24.6 per cent of LoB shares and were "trying to merge with them," she said. Rather than allow a third party to purchase the shares and "cause other complications," the Mutual decided to buy the shares themselves.
When that 10 per cent block of shares is added to the 24.6 per cent of LoB already owned by the Mutual, this brought the Mutual's ownership of LoB to 34.6 per cent. This triggered a requirement under the take-over code specified by the Companies Act as well as the stock exchange rules that the Mutual must make an offer to all the shareholders of Life of Barbados.
The result is that the two companies in Barbados, "find themselves having to sort out their relationship with each other rather earlier than they intended to," she said. "There is no animosity. They just need a little time to iron out the current situation."
The situation in Barbados "really does not impact us here," Ms. MacLure said.
Since that offer was made by the Mutual to the shareholders of Life of Barbados, there has been a board meeting at Life of Jamaica at which members of both Barbadian companies were present. Ms. MacLure said, "I was at that board meeting and I promise you that everything continued to be handled in a totally professional manner."
