What We Do

Who Can Benefit

Investment Considerations

Post-Investment Support

Exits

What We Do

We provide financing to private companies in exchange for shares.  This means we make direct investments as a minority shareholder.  These are not loans.  We do not charge interest or fees.  We don't need collateral or guarantees.  Companies do not even need to repay our money.  To put it in other words: we are private equity investors.  Our cash injections can help companies through a transition or allow them to pursue further growth and expansion.

Who Can Benefit

We can provide equity capital to private companies in Trinidad & Tobago and other Caricom countries.  We prefer to invest in medium-sized companies with an experienced management team.  We look for companies with good prospects for growth and a long-term increase in shareholder value.

The companies that can benefit from our participation are typically in a type of transition that requires new capital. Examples are:

• Locally operating firms that are ready to start exporting.
• Family run firms that want to expand and professionalize management.
• Management buy-outs or buy-ins for companies with succession problems.
• Spin-offs or divestments from local conglomerates, state-owned enterprises, or multinationals with local operations.
• Businesses that intend to go public in the medium term but require pre-flotation capital to sustain growth while preparing for this.
• Businesses starting new product lines or entering new markets.

We may also consider start-up companies, but in that case we definitely require a highly experienced and qualified management team.  We generally prefer to wait with our investment until some sort of track record has been established.  Besides, our minimum investment is typically larger than most companies require to get started.

For companies outside Trinidad and Tobago, we will only act as a co-investor with other local investors in their home country.

Investment Considerations

We only provide equity capital.  This means we provide financing to your company in exchange for becoming a shareholder in it.  This can be structured as a mix of ordinary shares and preference shares.  If you are also looking for debt financing, we will happily work together with any other financial institution of your choice.  We expect that most financing situations will actually require both debt and equity.  We are in business for the equity component; we do not provide loans.

We do not seek to control your company.  If we do not have confidence in you or your management team, we will not invest in the first place.  We usually invest as a minority shareholder in your company.

We do not usually require a cash return during the lifetime of our investments.  This means we normally will not ask your company to pay dividends or provide repayments to us.  Our goal is to expand companies as much as possible and maximize their value.  Growing companies normally absorb cash.  Therefore, we prefer to re-invest profits into your business.

Post-Investment Support

We do more than provide mere money.  We regard ourselves as active hands-on investors.  Because we only make our profits through capital gains, our only purpose is to maximize the value of your company.

If you do not have it already, you will need to introduce a professional corporate governance, business planning, and financial management and budgeting structure.  We are prepared to help you in all these areas.  In addition, we may be able to help you with strategy and market planning and with executive recruitment.  While we do not wish to get involved in your company's operations and management, we do want to play an active role at the Board level.

In order to perform that role and structure our support, we will appoint one or two directors to your Board.  This is usually one of our senior directors coupled with a member of our professional staff.  Outside of regular Board meetings, you may call on them whenever you want to arrange appropriate assistance from us, or just want to bounce some ideas of them.

Finally, we should mention that we do not charge any fees to companies that we have invested in.  Our only benefits in those situations come from our role as shareholder.

Exits

Of course, we do ultimately need to achieve a profit for ourselves too.  We expect to do this by eventually selling our shareholding in your company.  We call this our exit.  Assuming we have all been successful in maximising the growth and value of your company, we hope to make a profit then.  Typical exit routes are as follows.

• An Initial Public Offering (IPO) of your company's shares on a stock exchange.
• Private placement to sell our shares in your company to other institutional investors.  Such institutional investors may include other investment funds.
• A sale of our shares to a strategic investor that is interested in taking a position in your company.

The timing for our exit is not determined up front and these exit routes may not all be feasible in your case.  However, we will need your support for eventually achieving an exit and will discuss the most appropriate ways with you for doing this.  We typically expect to remain an active shareholder in your company for a period around three to seven years.