S.S.B. Chairman Discusses Proposed Purchase of G.O.B.’s Utility Shares

On Tuesday, News Five broke the story of what has every appearance of being a bailout of G.O.B. by S.S.B. at the Prime Minister’s request. If indeed it is a bailout, then there is good news for the government today because the Board of Directors met and green-lighted the investment. That’s probably not a big surprise since the Prime Minister personally made the query to Investment Committee Chairman Net Vasquez last week via letter, asking if the S.S.B. would be interested in purchasing ten million dollars of G.O.B.’s shares in B.T.L. and forty-five million in B.E.L.  And with all haste, it has been done. This evening, following the meeting of the Board, Chairman Doug Singh told News Five that the Investment Committee had met twice before recommending the additional investment, and now it’s good to go.

Doug Singh

Doug Singh, Chairman, S.S.B.

“What that means is that Social Security will engage the government to look at potentially purchasing a certain amount of their shares from B.E.L. and B.T.L.—not to exceed a certain price. Of course you would imagine that some financial analysis has been done and that analysis will determine at the end of the day what is the best possible investment point.”

Mike Rudon

“We understand that the Prime Minister wrote a letter to the S.S.B. asking for a consideration or asking if the S.S.B. would be interested in these shares.”

Doug Singh

“Well the letter essentially said that the government is seeking the raise a certain amount of money and in doing so wished to dispose of a certain amount of shares from B.E.L. and B.T.L; asked Social Security if they would at all be interested in purchasing any of these shares and if they would, then the government was prepared to engage them with respect to agreeing upon a price on the exchange. So it was essential to indicate an interest.”

Mike Rudon

“Could you take us through now…I know that you perhaps deliberately didn’t mention the share price. Have you all been able to come up…because I know that government has said that it want to raise a certain amount of money, but I would imagine that the S.S.B. could not make a move without knowing how much exactly the shares are being offered for.”

Doug Singh

“Well no, actually that is not necessarily the case. The information on B.T.L. and B.E.L. are public, in addition to which we are current shareholders and we have board representatives. So we have a fair idea of what those shares are worth and based on the returns that they’ve had over the last few years. As in the case of B.T.L., since the investment—I think the Social Security invested in B.T.L. since 2010 or 2011…might be 2012, can’t remember exactly when it was—the returns have consistently been between eight and ten percent of the dollar amount invested. About half of which has been cash returned; the rest has been appreciation in value because of the amount that has been invested in it, we are able to book that. So we have a clear understanding of what the value of those shares are and what we will be prepared based on the history of the returns of the institution and what we can expect to get from it. So it is not, I think, at all unusual for a price to be left open at this point in time and be subject to negotiations. It is the mandate of the Investment Committee to review an analysis that is done internally by Social Security and recommendations made that if you were to consider this investment, you should not go beyond a certain line; you should not pay more than a certain amount for the shares. And it is in that spirit that the analysis was done and the recommendations were made.”