New FTC board to tackle merger backlog

An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion (FTC) and the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC) have been for­mal­ly re­con­sti­tut­ed, with in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment hand­ed over by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo at Pres­i­dent’s House, end­ing a 10-month gap with­out a func­tion­ing FTC board.

At the cen­tre of the re­set is Nisha Per­sad, who has been ap­point­ed chair­man of both com­mis­sions in a move aimed at restor­ing over­sight of com­pe­ti­tion pol­i­cy and reg­u­lat­ed sec­tors.

Speak­ing to the me­dia af­ter the cer­e­mo­ny yes­ter­day, Per­sad made clear that her im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ty is to op­er­a­tionalise both bod­ies.

“Well, of course, the first plan of ac­tion is to have a board meet­ing be­cause this is the first time I’m meet­ing the mem­bers of the board. So we’re hop­ing to sched­ule that meet­ing for some­time next week. And we’re hop­ing as well to meet with the rel­e­vant min­is­ters and line min­is­ters so that we can prop­er­ly fol­low the man­date that each com­mis­sion has,” she said.

She al­so not­ed that hold­ing both po­si­tions is not un­prece­dent­ed and re­flects the leg­isla­tive frame­work gov­ern­ing the com­mis­sions.

“I don’t be­lieve so, no. I think I can’t, it’s on the cal­en­dar, I think it was al­so RIC and FTC, if I re­mem­ber cor­rect­ly. Right. But I be­lieve pri­or to that, the RIC Chair­man was al­so the FTC Chair­man. So it’s not ir­reg­u­lar be­cause a mem­ber of the RIC must be on the FTC,” Per­sad added.

The new­ly ap­point­ed FTC board com­pris­es Tama­ra De­wan-Roopans­ingh, Bar­ry Chin-Fatt, Johnathan Mark, and Pat­sy Ramharacks­ingh-Sama­roo.

The RIC board in­cludes Tama­ra De­wan-Roopans­ingh, Aruna Be­har­ry­lall, Ne­ha Ma­haraj, and Genevieve Thomp­son.

Per­sad, a se­nior at­tor­ney-at-law at N.K Per­sad & Co in Port of Spain, holds a Bach­e­lor of Laws de­gree from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don and a Le­gal Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate from the Hugh Wood­ing Law School.

Her ap­point­ment fol­lows le­gal pres­sure over the de­lay in con­sti­tut­ing the FTC. A pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter from at­tor­ney Renu­ka Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal, act­ing for Wen­dell Ever­s­ley and led by Se­nior Coun­sel Stu­art Young, threat­ened ju­di­cial re­view against the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism.

The de­lay stalled key trans­ac­tions, in­clud­ing Agos­ti­ni Group Ltd’s pro­posed ac­qui­si­tion of Pres­tige Hold­ings Ltd, which has al­ready se­cured 96.9 per cent share­hold­er ap­proval but re­mains sub­ject to reg­u­la­to­ry clear­ance.

Pres­tige Hold­ings Group CEO Si­mon Hardy said he is hope­ful the re­con­sti­tut­ed com­mis­sion will move the process for­ward.

“But I am hope­ful that now that the FTC Com­mis­sion and Board has been es­tab­lished, that at their, let’s say, leisure, but at their next or­der of busi­ness, they would be able to as­sess what­ev­er it is they need to as­sess with the deal and pass a de­ci­sion ac­cord­ing­ly, which would then en­able Agos­ti­ni Group Ltd to pass the last hur­dle,” Hardy said.

He said the com­pa­ny had al­ready met the re­quired share­hold­er thresh­old and was await­ing on­ly reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval to com­plete the trans­ac­tion, adding that a time­ly de­ter­mi­na­tion would bring clar­i­ty to the mar­ket and al­low the process to con­clude with­out fur­ther de­lay or un­cer­tain­ty for in­vestors and stake­hold­ers alike in the sec­tor.