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MONDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2022
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$167m BOB payout rolled over by Gov’t By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net THE GOVERNMENT has decided not to complete Bank of the Bahamas’ rescue by injecting $167m in cash to replace a “promissory note” after efforts to recover the latter’s toxic commercial loans proved “trickier” than anticipated. The BISX-listed institution’s 2022 full-year financial statements, released late last week, reveal the Government has instead agreed to a three-year roll-over or extension to the maturity of the note that had been due for repayment at endAugust 2022. Simon Wilson, the Ministry of Finance’s financial secretary, yesterday told Tribune Business it had proven “much more complex” than thought for Bahamas Resolve to realise and sell the assets that were pledged as collateral to secure Bank of The Bahamas’ previous delinquent commercial loans.
• Resolve’s recovery of toxic loans ‘trickier’ than thought • Promissory note rolled over for extra three years at 4% • Bank chief: Longer maturity ‘no big deal’ given liquidity Bahamas Resolve is the special purpose vehicle (SPV), created in 2014, to which Bank of The Bahamas’ toxic commercial credit was transferred to prevent the latter’s collapse and thus facilitate its rescue. To fill the hole created by the transfer, two promissory notes were injected into the bank’s balance sheet, worth $100m and $167m, respectively, in 2014 and 2018.
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SIMON WILSON
Bahamasair ‘crippled’ by cabin crew action that hits passengers By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net HUNDREDS of Bahamians and tourists yesterday had their travel plans thrown into chaos when Bahamasair was forced to cancel all afternoon flights due to an “unwarranted sickout” by 80 percent of rostered flight attendants. The “unforeseen” industrial action sparked long lines of frustrated passengers at Lynden Pindling International Airport (LPIA) after the national flag carrier confirmed it was forced to cancel outbound flights from Nassau to key Florida destinations including Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Orlando.
TRACY COOPER Tracy Cooper, Bahamasair’s managing director, confirmed to Tribune Business it was “reaching out” to other airlines to see if they could take its passengers although he acknowledged
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BOB ‘can’t say we’re bank’ till loan growth By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net BANK of The Bahamas cannot truly “say we are on the way back” until it generates sustainable loan book growth again despite enjoying a 2022 financial year in which profits more than doubled to hit $11.218m. Kenrick Brathwaite, the BISX-listed institution’s managing director, told Tribune Business that the 156.7 percent increase in total comprehensive income to end-June 2022 compared to the prior year’s $4.37 was driven by reduced loan loss provisions and non-interest
income revenue sources - neither of which can be relied on as consistent profit drivers. Emphasising that Bank of The Bahamas needs to get back to its core business, which is extending loans to qualifying borrowers, he added that he was optimistic that the Central Bank will “release us” some time in the current 2023 financial year from the bar imposed on writing commercial credit ever since the institution was first rescued in 2014 by a taxpayer-financed bail-out.
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Oil explorer says ‘entitled’ to four licence renewals By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net AN OIL explorer’s assertion that it is “entitled to a renewal” of its four Bahamas licences has given its opponents and local environmental activists “a sick stomach”. Eytan Ulliel, chief executive for the former Bahamas Petroleum Company (BPC), in an update to shareholders on Friday argued that such a renewal is deserved after fulfilling all commitments to-date - including the drilling of its Perseverance One well in waters west of Andros earlier this year as it seeks to gain a return on its $94m Bahamian investment. Writing in the renamed Challenger Energy Group’s (CEG) just-published 2021 annual report, he reiterated that the oil explorer is “engaging” with the Davis administration over the renewal of the four exploration licences that expired at
JOE DARVILLE end-June 2021 just months before the current government was voted into office. But, while Challenger is seeking a three-year renewal that would commit it to drilling a second exploratory well in Bahamian waters within that timeframe, Mr Ulliel again made clear the company will not pursue such a project unless it secures a joint venture partner in the form of one of the world’s major oil producers to take on the financial, technical and operational risk. Suggesting that the results and data gleaned
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