The Government is exploring whether “a third party” could take a minor stake in the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) and thus return the company to majority Bahamian ownership, a Wall Street credit rating agency has revealed.
It is unclear whether the Government’s four-person BTC negotiating team will have put such a suggestion to CWC yet, but the ‘third party’ option – having an entity other than the Government buy a stake in the telecoms carrier – was previously floated in Tribune Business by columnist and financial analyst, Richard Coulson.
Exactly how the ‘third party’ option will work was not detailed by S&P, and it is possible the Government will not yet know itself. The likeliest, and most transparent mechanism, would be for the Government and CWC to both agree to sell a small percentage of their existing shareholdings to the Bahamian public via an initial public offering (IPO). This could be arranged in such a way that, post-IPO, the Government and Bahamian ‘third party’ collectively end up owning 51 per cent, with CWC retaining 49 per cent.
