Caribbean insurance giant Sagicor Financial Corporation wants to buy CLICO?International Life in Barbados and has also told the Trinidad and Tobago government it wants a stake in the company there too.
Sagicor is on the verge of receiving $200 million from International Finance Corporation (IFC) and is seeking approval of that agreement from shareholders at a meeting scheduled for June 2.
Sagicor’s president Dodridge Miller said yesterday that the cash injection from IFC would better place the Barbadian-based company to expand through acquisitions and new business.
During a teleconference that included media from Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago, Miller said a Sagicor team had already met with the Trinidad government and had also alerted the Barbados Government and regulators of its interest.
CLICO Holdings Barbados, a subsidiary of the CL Financial in Trinidad has already sold CLICO?Mortgage & Finance to Barbados Public Workers’ Co-operative Credit Union, CLICO?General to the Weatherhead Group of Companies, but potential buyers for the beleaguered CLICO International Life have shunned it because of its Executive Flexible Premium Annuity (EFPA) portfolio with outstanding claims of more than $300 million.
“The EFPA is a regional problem. We are best positioned to assist the regulators and the governments in solving it. How we would do that we can’t tell you because we have not had an opportunity to see what’s there. In relation to Trinidad, we . . . have indicated an interest in participating in a solution to CLICO,” Miller explained.
Addressing Sagicor’s financial performance in the first quarter of 2011 which saw the company register a $22.2 million loss, compared to a $26.2 million profit for the same period last year, Miller put the blame squarely on $72.4 million in catastrophe losses by Sagicor at Lloyds in Britain.
The remainder of Sagicor Group, he said, produced net income before taxes of $57.8 million in the first quarter, up from $51 million last year.
