Over the past couple weeks BTL owner, Jeff Prosser has been making moves to shake off the small shareholders that prevent him from being the 100% owner of BTL.
But while those moves have been craftily resisted by those shareholders, the story doesn't end there as Prosser is now offering them $5.88 per share or an option to convert current holdings into preferential stock earning a minimum 10%. But one of the largest shareholders is not even considering that offer. The unions say that they want back their former status of having a say in BTL.
Dylan Reneau, PSU President
“We’ve had a meeting with Mr. Herbert about the ‘B’ and ‘C’ shares. We’ve gotten a photocopy specimen to do our due diligence so that process is ongoing. We are supposed to get those ‘B’ and ‘C’ shares that we initially had gotten but not from government, from Belize Telecom because the shares were actually sold to Belize Telecom and now we are trying to recoup those shares certificates. So basically that is ongoing right now.”
“It would give us a better position being ‘B’ share holders than ‘C’ shareholders and our membership has mandated us to get back those shares.”
Alfonso Noble,
They have offered to buy the shares from you for $5.88 or you all keep it and get a 10% interest on the shares. What’s your next move?
Dylan Reneau,
“Well our position still is that we don’t want to sell. To be honest with you, with all the concessions Mr. Prosser has gotten, BTL is definitely a very lucrative company and our agreement with government was for the shares to be held in trust and the dividend from those shares to be utilized for the benefit of all government paid workers. We want to maintain that. If we sell the shares then we will just have money out there and we won’t be getting any future dividend unless we try to invest it. And to me BTL is the safest investment that you can have in Belize right now.”
As it is the unions are performing their due diligence to confirm that they have been given their original shares, that had been swapped to ‘C’ shares back in May of this year.