It’s been confirmed that a connected party to Michael Lee-Chin sold 22,708,700 shares of NCB Financial Group Limited last Friday for $1.54 billion in one of the largest market transactions in two years.

A disclosure was posted on the Trinidad & Tobago Stock Exchange on Monday about the transaction which took place on the Jamaica Stock Exchange on June 9. A Wednesday article by the Trinidad & Tobago Guardian noted that company secretary Dave Garcia confirmed the sale was related to Lee-Chin which was solely listed as a connected party. The sale comes 16 days after Lee-Chin took a leave of absence from the NCBFG board and its core subsidiaries with Professor Alvin Wint chairing the NCBFG board in his absence.

The sale represented 0.92 per cent of NCBFG’s issued shares and would push AIC (Barbados) Limited’s stake from 1,300,439,642 shares or 52.72 per cent to 1,277,730,942 shares if it was the connected party that sold the shares. This would represent AIC’s lowest position in NCBFG since June 2021 when it owned 1,276,148,279 shares or 51.73 per cent of NCBFG. However, Lee-Chin’s overall interest would likely decrease from 1,506,353,835 shares to 1,483,645,135 shares as per the recent shareholder list.

This sale comes at a time when NCBFG’s share price is down 16.30 per cent year to date on the JSE to $66.89 and down 41 per cent on the TTSE to TT$2.70 with both share prices down everyday since the transaction. This leaves NCBFG with a trailing price to earnings ratio of 7.28 times with a book value of $71.45.

Although there is a JSE requirement for the top 10 interests to be disclosed at the end of each quarter, the stake would fall outside of that list and could only be accessed by people with access to a top 100 list to know who the buyers were.

In July 2021, NCBFG President Patrick Hylton and Deputy CEO Dennis Cohen surrendered 95,133,302 shares of NCBFG for a consideration of $13.79 billion. Between August 26 – September 28, 2021, AIC purchased 22,043,054 additional shares for a consideration of $2.88 billion for prices ranging from $127.60 to $131.50. An additional 1,120,200 shares were purchased by AIC in the subsequent quarter for $142.83 million.

NCBFG shareholders have had to endure more than two years of no dividend payments as the regional conglomerate gears up for Basel III and IFRS 17 later this year. NCBFG net profit attributable to shareholders for the six months declined 59 per cent from $10.43 billion to $4.23 billion with its balance sheet climbing higher to $2.14 trillion.