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Ja­maica-born Michael Lee-Chin’s per­son­al in­vest­ment com­pa­nies are still deep in dis­cus­sions with bond­hold­ers, even as new dis­clo­sures re­veal that the icon­ic chair­man of the NCB Fi­nan­cial Group (NCBFG), the north Caribbean is­land’s largest fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion, could lose con­trol of the com­pa­ny, that he ac­quired a ma­jor­i­ty stake of in 2002.

NCBFG, which is gear­ing up to raise US$300 mil­lion on the in­ter­na­tion­al cap­i­tal mar­kets this week, re­leased a pre­lim­i­nary of­fer­ing mem­o­ran­dum last week out­lin­ing the var­i­ous risk fac­tors tied to the up­com­ing trans­ac­tion. Chief among them: 50.5 per cent of NCBFG’s shares are cur­rent­ly pledged by Lee-Chin, the group’s founder, chair­man and con­trol­ling share­hold­er, for mon­ey that he raised from com­pa­nies he con­trols:

* Talks with bond­hold­ers have been on­go­ing since last year, with ac­tiv­i­ty ramp­ing up be­tween March and June for sev­er­al bonds. Spe­cial­ty Cof­fee In­vest­ments Com­pa­ny Ltd, one of Lee-Chin’s en­ti­ties, has been in dis­cus­sions over a J$1.9 bil­lion (US$11.84 mil­lion) bond, ac­cord­ing to the Ja­maica Glean­er. There have been no pub­lic up­dates in re­cent times, but bond­hold­ers have re­ject­ed some ex­ten­sion re­quests;