BTL Execs seek to buy company…
Tonight there is a major new plot twist in the continuing drama surrounding the fate of Belize Telecommunications Limited. What had been a story of two suitors, each competing for the favours of the lovely maiden known as B.T.L., has suddenly become a three-way competition…and while the new boy at B.T.L.’S door doesn’t have the money, muscle and high level connections of Jeffrey Prosser or Michael Ashcroft, he’s got experience, sincerity and soul, not to mention a whole lot better reputation than his American or British competitors.
What’s happening is that, based on the Belize Government’s stated desire to put majority ownership of B.T.L. into local hands, a group of Belizeans, going under the name of Sunrise Investments Ltd., has stepped up to the plate with a proposal for a local buyout of the fifty-two percent of the company now held by government. But the principals of Sunrise are not the usual suspects typically found sniffing around the scene of any big money deal going down in Belmopan. They are three long-time Belizean executives of the company with close to fifty years of combined experience in the telecommunications industry. Gaspar Aguilar is B.T.L.’S present C.E.O. and former chief financial officer of the company. Karen Bevans is B.T.L.’S head of business development and marketing, while Roberto Young is a former manager of network operations currently on contract to the Public Utilities Commission. According to sources close to the deal, the trio has met with the Prime Minister to propose an employee led buyout of the G.O.B. shares with the goal of purchasing the entire company and making shares available to the Belizean public. And while talk is just that, financing for the deal does appear to be within the realm of the possible, as we understand that First Caribbean International Bank, out of its headquarters in Barbados, is willing to provide financing for the fifty-seven million U.S. dollar initial purchase, based on the Belize Government extricating itself from the competing legal claims of Jeffrey Prosser’s Innovative Communications Corporation and Michael Ashcroft’s Carlisle Holdings. Prosser has G.O.B. tied up in a Miami Court after he failed to come up with the money to pay Belmopan for the shares, while Ashcroft, who originally sold the shares to government under duress, is claiming rights under a buyback agreement that, at least on the face of it, a London arbitrator has said looks enforceable. That leaves a tremendously heavy ball in the court of Said Musa. Popular sentiment is clearly on the side of local ownership and politically, the facilitation of the Sunrise bid should be a no-brainer for an administration desperately in need of good P.R. But getting out of the legal and financial paws of two of the baddest cats in the international business jungle will require skills and resources currently in very short supply in the nation’s capital. How the P.M. can resolve the increasingly complex telecommunications mess may well be an indicator of his ability to solve his many other financial and political challenges.
