By November of this year, the company you know as BTL will cease to exist. That's because Jeffrey Prosser has designed an unprecedented strategy to gut BTL, by transferring its assets and liabilities to a new company called Belize Telecom, not Telecommunications, Limited, get a new license for that company, and leave the small local shareholders holding their share certificates, with just enough money to buy themselves out. That's the reading we get from the intent of a resolution issued by the board of directors and circulated to shareholders.
Under Prosser's plan, the old shareholders would keep their shares in the old BTL, but that company would have no assets, just the name. But it would have 33.6 million Belize dollars in the bank, which is the value of all shares that Prosser does not own. Assuming that the small shareholders want to cash in their shares, since they are now in a company that has no value, they would be expected to organize, in their own best interests and agree to buy themselves out at 5 dollars, 46 cents a share. That is the same price Prosser bought his majority holding from government at.
What's the strategy? Well Prosser has said form the start that he wants a fully private company, but rather than going through the hassle of buying out the small shareholders, like he said he would, Prosser will just put everything in his new company and leave them behind with the money to pay for their share certificates, which as of the end of October won't be worth the paper they are written on. Critics of the maneuver argue that it disenfranchises and defrauds shareholders, including the Workers' Unions, which bought into the company in the 90's on the expectation that it would operate by its articles of association. Well those articles are now out the door, and the one holding it open is the Government of Belize which is facilitating the transaction by issuing Prosser a new license. But it may not end as easily as that; 7 News has picked up rumblings that there are those in the community of small, yet powerful shareholders who may mount a challenge.