Appendix 1: Case Studies: Domestic Energy Sector Entrepreneurship

• Author: Wendell Mottley
• Profession: New York-based Investment Banker having previously served as executive director of the company which eventually became the pivot of Trinidad and Tobago s natural gas-led industrialization and as Minister of Finance, credited with playing a decisive role in setting Trinidad and Tobago on a sustained path of growth from 1994 onwards
• Pages: 206-216

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TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO INDUSTRIAL POLICY 1959–2008

APPENDIX I — CASE STUDIES:

DOMESTIC ENERGY SECTOR

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

CASE STUDY #1

CLICO

The first case study details the involvement of the Colonial Life

Insurance Company (CLICO)1 and its parent, CL Financial, in

export chemical production at Point Lisas in Trinidad. CLICO is

the largest locally-owned insurance company on the island, and its

commercial success occasioned the formation of CL Financial to

hold diverse assets.

At the end of the oil boom in 1986, CLICO had a major

problem. The company had heavily invested policyholders’ funds

in residential and commercial mortgages, but the ensuing depression

had severely impaired the company’s mortgage portfolio, writing

new business had become difficult and there was also a dearth of

other investment opportunities.

The depression deeply scarred the entire domestic financial

sector, leading to Central Bank intervention in several institutions.

The mood among surviving institutions was to hunker down and

wait out the depression.

Not so with CLICO. Emboldened by his North American

business experience, CLICO’s newly appointed Chairman,

Lawrence Duprey, began looking in directions previously thought

to be outside the purview of the domestic private sector.

A group of foreign investors led by Imperial Chemical Industries

(ICI), enlightened by government’s success in its pioneering

methanol investment, were appraising the feasibility of private

investment in further methanol capacity in Trinidad. CLICO was

attracted to the project because ICI would provide a bankable

offtake agreement for the project. ICI’s later withdrawal from the

project (for internal corporate reasons) was thus a major setback.