Jun 2016 Financial News

Ex Bwee employees urged to accept ex-gratia payment

Jun 17, 2016

MINORITY shareholders and former employees of the defunct BWIA West Indies Airways Limited (BWIA) are being given a final opportunity to collect an ex-gratia payment of 20 cents per share being offered to them by the Government.

A source close to the issue explained that the offer of the ex-gratia payment has been reopened several times over the years with no greater success in having it accepted by minority shareholders or former BWIA employees.

However,this final offer is being made as Government is seeking to wind up BWIA and is expected to complete the process within the coming year.

Once the company is wound up, there will be no further opportunity for collection of the ex-gratia payment.

Following the decision to shut down BWIA, the government had a valuation done which concluded that the airline’s shares were worthless. However, the government decided to offer an ex-gratia payment of 20 cents per share to minority shareholders and employees who were shareholders through a pension plan holding just over 15 percent of the airline’s shares in trust for the employees.

BWIA workers would later make a case for compensation from the Government, complaining that the shares were never transferred to them and so they never had any opportunity to sell them while BWIA was listed on the Trinidad and Tobago Stock Exchange and its shares available for trading.

BWIA was privatised in 1995 and the Government became a minority shareholder with 49 percent of the stock and 15 percent being put in trust in a pension plan for employees.

Many of the shareholders rejected the 20 cents per share offer, believing that more was due to them.

Source:
Newsday
Friday June 17, 2016

http://www.newsday.co.tt/news/0,229356.html