Tuesday, April 26, 2011

What role is Mark Holowesko playing in the BTC - Cable and Wireless marriage?

Holowesko denies conflict claim...


Responds to PLP’s claims about BTC board appointment




Professional money manager Mark Holowesko has strongly denied claims made by the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) that his recent appointment to the board of the newly-privatized Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) represents a conflict.

At the close of the deal with Cable and Wireless Communications (CWC) early this month, Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham announced that Holowesko, a principal of Holowesko Capital Partners, is one of the three members who will represent the government on the board.

In a recent press statement, the PLP attached general information from Franklin Templeton Investment Funds that lists Holowesko as a member of the board of directors.

Franklin Templeton Investments Portfolio Holdings — also included as part of the press release — shows that Franklin Templeton holds shares in Cable and Wireless Communications.

But Holowesko dismissed claims that he has been appointed to the BTC board to serve interests other than the government and the people of The Bahamas.

“I am not intimately involved in Cable and Wireless,” Holowesko told The Nassau Guardian.

“I own no shares in Cable and Wireless personally and I don’t know that I’ve ever bought any shares in Cable and Wireless for myself or the funds that I’m directly responsible for.”

But the PLP highlighted what it called an apparent conflict.

“At the time of the announcement of Mr. Holowesko to the board of BTC, no disclosure was made by the prime minister or Cable and Wireless of the apparent divided loyalty of Mr. Holowesko,” the PLP said.

“Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition demands to know in whose interest is Mr. Holowesko serving.

“Is Mr. Holowesko representing the interest of the Bahamian people as a government appointee to the board, or is he there as a representative of the company for which he is employed, or is it both?”

But Holowesko said there are several erroneous statements in the PLP’s release.

One of them, he said, is the suggestion that he is paid by Franklin Templeton Investments.

And he said none of the funds he manages holds shares in Cable and Wireless.

Holowesko said he was inquiring with the Franklin Templeton office in the United States about whether any of the funds on whose board he sits holds shares in Cable and Wireless.

“I am a director for a group of funds over in Europe for the Templeton SICAV funds,” he explained.

“Franklin Templeton Investments isn’t the correct legal name for it. Franklin Templeton is a company incorporated in America, which is an investment management company and they have mutual funds in Europe under a Luxembourg umbrella fund called SICAV fund and I am a board member of those funds.

“I’m not a director of Franklin Templeton, the investment management company. I’m a director of some of the funds that they run over in Europe. That’s an important distinction.

“Franklin Templeton funds may or may not own Cable and Wireless shares.”

Further explaining his role with the investment group, Holowesko said, “Franklin Templeton is a company that runs funds all over the world and the funds that I’m a director on, I’m making an educated guess, are about 20 or 30 percent of the mutual funds that they manage, so they’re not the US funds or the Canadian funds. They’re the European funds. Those funds may or may not own Cable and Wireless shares.”

Holowesko explained that as a director on the board of certain funds, he would have no specific knowledge of the day-to-day activities of them.

“I’m not involved in the day-to-day management of those funds. As a director we meet twice a year in London to basically review the operational activities of those funds,” he said.

“The day-to-day investment management of those funds is not under us as directors and I’m not an insider in terms of knowing what they buy and sell and when they buy and sell.

“I do get reports as a director at certain periods in terms of what the funds hold at that point in time, and whether or not those funds own shares in Cable and Wireless today I don’t know and I’ve asked the legal department of Franklin Templeton to let me know and I’ll have that response.”

Holowesko was contacted by The Nassau Guardian to respond to the PLP statement.

The opposition party said, “The nagging questions persist as to what role Holowesko is playing in this BTC, Cable and Wireless marriage.”

“Was Mr. Mark Holowesko involved in the sale of BTC to Cable and Wireless, a company he is intimately involved in as an investor, from the beginning?

“If so, in what capacity? Who was he serving then and who is he serving now?”

But Holowesko said he played no role in bringing Cable and Wireless to the table for the BTC deal. In fact, he said he knows very little about the transaction.

“I have very little knowledge and I have had absolutely zero activity in the sale to Cable and Wireless,” he said.

“As a matter of fact when the prime minister asked me to go on the board, I said ‘one of my main concerns is I don’t know enough about this transaction. If you want me to go on the board you need to have somebody fill me in on this transaction.

“So it is completely and totally erroneous that I have any knowledge or any kind of involvement in this transaction. I have zero involvement in this transaction and I know very little about it.”

Holowesko said he has a meeting with government representatives on Thursday so he can learn more about the specifics of the CWC/BTC transaction and what will be expected of him as a board member.

Holowesko was also asked whether Franklin Templeton Investments is benefiting in any way from the BTC sale.

“I have no idea,” he said.

In its statement, the PLP also said it had been informed that the parent company of Cable and Wireless Communications, Temasek Holdings, is the majority shareholder of Singapore Telecommunications Limited.

“A major shareholder of SingTel is Templeton Global Advisors Limited which falls under the umbrella of Franklin Templeton Investments,” the PLP said.

“Temasek Holdings Limited’s 54 percent ownership of SingTel is under the control of the Government of Singapore.”

Holowesko explained: “Temasek is a company in Singapore which is 100 percent owned by the Singaporean government, which the Singaporean government uses as its vehicle for investing on behalf of the Singaporean people, and nobody owns shares in that company other than the government of Singapore. I have no interaction with that company.

“And how that company is somehow involved in Cable and Wireless I wouldn’t know, and to somehow imply that we have some sort of interest or I have some sort of interest in that company is like saying the average American has some sort of interest in the US Treasury. It’s silly.

“That’s just loony. Total fabrication.”

Company documents with information on Franklin Templeton Investment Funds’ board of directors has a brief reference to “Temasek”, but not the company.

The company address of one of the Franklin Templeton directors — Dr. J. B. Mark Mobius, executive chairman of Templeton’s Emerging Markets Group — is listed as “7 Temasek Boulevard” in Singapore.

Asked how he felt about the claims being made by the PLP, Holowesko, who is the son of Senate President Lyn Holowesko, said, “I’m not a politician. I’m a businessman and a family man. I’ve had family members in politics. I don’t like politics. I abhor politics.

“I find most of it to be a waste of time for these particular reasons that I’m involved in right now. This is time wasting. As far as I’m concerned it’s non-productive and I guess politicians like to do these sorts of things for a variety of reasons. And whatever reasons they have I guess it’s up to them.”

Holowesko said he was asked by the prime minister to be a member of the BTC board and he hopes to make a positive contribution on behalf of the government and the Bahamian people.

“From an investment perspective, I’ve been in the investment business since 1985. So I have a lot of investment experience,” he said.

“…From what I understand — and I’ll get more information [this] week — there’s some very specific things that Cable and Wireless is supposed to do as part of this purchase for The Bahamas and my role on that board is to ensure that they do those things first and foremost.”

The two other government members of the BTC board are Maria Ferere, a partner of FT Consultants Ltd., and Deidre Prescott, who works for the Bahamas Electricity Corporation and previously served as a director on the BTC board.

Four employees of LIME (CWC’s Caribbean arm) are also members of the new board, including LIME CEO David Shaw.

4/26/2011

thenassauguardian