Season to invest
Tuesday September 27 2011 | 02:17 AM

The board of the National Insurance Scheme is expected to make a decision soon on whether it will allow Four Seasons’ developers to access $80 million from its Pension Fund to get the stalled project moving again.

Barbados TODAY investigations have revealed that a proposal to invest in the project was made to the NIS board by executive chairman of Paradise Beach Limited, Professor Avinash Persaud. The two parties reportedly met again earlier today.

Sources said the comprehensive package presented to the board had met with favourable verbal response. Government has been very supportive of the project from the outset.

Efforts to get a comment from Minister of Finance Chris Sinckler were unsuccessful. It is understood that he is overseas.

When contacted, Persaud confirmed the approach to the NIS and said that having made substantial advance in negotiations on a $180 million credit facility, developers were now concentrating on raising equity.

He said he believed that the region’s assets were not sufficiently owned by “ordinary citizens”. He added that as part of the process of “democratising and regionalising” the ownership of Four Seasons, an approach for investment had also been made to other national insurance schemes across the region.

“Four Seasons is the Gucci of hotel brands. It is the very top brand and ordinary citizens of this reason have never had the opportunity before, and probably never in the future, to own a piece of that brand.

“As a result of that I am going the extra mile to regionalise and localise the ownership of the assets. It would be easier for us simply to raise the money overseas and we have already spoken to many overseas investors,” he said.

Persaud revealed that Four Seasons Hotels Limited, which was a manager and an operator, was also “seriously considering” an investment in the Black Rock, St Michael development. He did not go into details of the presentation made to the NIS, noting it would be inappropriate since negotiations were at a delicate stage.

A source close to the negotiations said today Paradise Beach Limited had received a very strong response from regional investors but were in somewhat of a Catch-22 position.

“If we raise all the money from outside Barbados they will be people who will complain that we did not give the opportunity to Barbadians. If we raise all the money inside Barbados the same people will complain that we couldn’t get overseas investors. You can’t win,” he noted.

The source said he expected the approach to the NIS to be politicised for “narrow, self-serving” reasons but that the Four Seasons project had all positives for Barbados and not a “single negative”.

“This project will give such a major financial injection to the local economy that it can only benefit Barbadians, and I guess, any Government that is in power. So one can expect, for political reasons, some people trying to throw cold water on this approach to Government,” he said.

Government has previously guaranteed a $120 million ANSA McAL Bank Merchant loan for Four Seasons.