Last Tuesday a regional newspaper carried a small story which went mostly unnoticed.
It should not have. According to the Trinidad Express, Michael Lee Chin, chairman of the AIC Financial Group “revealed yesterday [January 23] that his conglomerate has a 50 percent partnership with Columbus Communications, the company which now owns CCTT (the Cable Company of Trinidad and Tobago).
So what you ask does that have to do with us. Well if one recalled that when the Government of The Bahamas granted the 15-year cable television franchise to Cable Bahamas, it was an article of faith that the company, Cable Bahamas would be majority-owned by Bahamians.
Many iterations later Philip Keeping who, despite a document to the contrary, remained the dominant and controlling shareholder until he relinquished his holdings in Columbus Communications to his colleague Brendan Paddick president and Chief Executive Officer of Ironbound Holdings (Barbados) Limited and its subsidiary Columbus Com-munications Inc.
According to Cable Bahamas’ website, Mr Paddick was the President & CEO of Persona Inc. and Persona Communications Inc. until August 2004. In 2002 Persona bought into Columbus Communications Limited and Mr Keeping became the largest shareholder in Persona with a place on the Persona Board.
Persona for its part replaced Mr Keeping as the largest shareholder in Cable Bahamas. Within 18 to 24 months of the Persona-Columbus deal, the Persona
Board which was headed by Mr Paddick, retained two Toronto-based investment banks to find a buyer for Persona which they did.
A group out of Texas bought Persona but had no interest in Cable Bahamas, so Mr Keeping found himself back with his Cable Bahamas shares.
By the end of 2004 it was announced that Ironbound, led by the same Brendan Paddick who was at Persona, had bought out Columbus Communications Inc. and that Mr Keeping was resigning from the company he had formed.
So who is Michael Lee Chin? He is of Jamaican heritage and his company AIC Financial in Canada has made him a billionaire. Mr Chin has parlayed his wealth from AIC Financial into the region.
In 2003 and 2004 Mr Chin invested in hotels, banks, energy and on January 24 made the announcement that began this story.
Through his partnership with Columbus Communi-cations, Mr Chin has placed himself in a strategic position to control the broadband market in the region – from The Bahamas to Trinidad and Tobago.
In his interview with the Express at the Hilton Port of Spain Mr Chin said that Columbus Communications “owns the controlling interest in Cable Bahamas, while the company also bought international fibre optic giant, Arcos Networks last year”.
Arcos Networks was a consortium led by Motorola and spent US$450 million to lay fibre optics across Miami, throughout Central America and various islands.
Lee Chin highlighted that Columbus Communi-cations also has the contract to bring the second fibre optic line to Jamaica.
A few days following his announcement of the Columbus deal, Mr Chin had this to say about the Caribbean: “We are living in the greatest era.
We are living in a region that is fraught with opportunities.” Describing the Caribbean as the third border to the US, with a long history of “respecting rule of law”, with opportunities for development in health care, telecommunications and the financial services, the AIC chairman pointed to the Caribbean as one of the potential retirement destinations of the 80 million retiring baby boomers, whom he said are “looking for a warm coastline”.
By C. E. HUGGINS, Business Editor, The Nassau Guardian
