Duprey's relative tries to stop CL from going into government hands

Businessman Kirk Carpenter is taking on Lawrence Duprey in a battle to keep CL FInancial out of the hands of the government of Trinidad and Tobago.

Carpenter, who is related to the CL Executive Chairman, launched a bid Friday to protect the private company on behalf of its minority shareholders. The group is concerned that there might be some kind of secret deal between Duprey and the Government to allow the state to take control of CL Financial.

Shareholders met at the Maraval Country CLub and appointed Carpenter interim chairman and spokesman for the newly-formed CL Financial Shareholders Association.

Carpenter told reporters the association represents about half of the shareholding in CL Financial. He said CL Financial needs to control two-thirds of the conglomerate’s issued share capital in order to get the approval of its shareholders to go ahead with an agreement with the Government.

Carpenter said members of his family already have close to a 30 per cent in the CL group.

“My grandfather is Leo Duprey. Cyril Duprey’s trust actually owns 1.6 million shares in CL Financial. My family apart from that owns another 460,000 shares outside the trust. That’s two million shares right there,” he told journalists.

The Trinidad Guardian reported Saturday that a CL official has denied that the Carpenter group controls enough shares to block the transaction. t quoted CL's finance director, Michael Carballo, as saying the group currently controls 66.9 per cent of the shareholder votes on record.

“Shareholders have a choice. It’s either this agreement and having an opportunity for their shares to be worth something in the future or allow the group to go into insolvency which would allow the creditors to take everything,” CL Financial director told the paper.

The paper said CL Financial is about to send out notices of an extraordinary general meeting of the company at the end of June. At that meeting, Duprey will try to get the minority shareholders of CL Financial to vote for the agreement with the Government.