Time and proper management are the healing tools that CL Financial needs- and some interest from the local private financial sector wouldn’t hurt either.

So said the conglomerate’s Group chief executive officer, Steve Bideshi, as he addressed the inaugural awards ceremony of the Securities Dealers’ Association of Trinidad and Tobago (SDATT), at the Banquet Hall of the Queen’s Park Oval, Woodbrook, on Friday.

Bideshi, whose last responsibility was as CCO of Citibank, Turkey and Israel Cluster, took the lead at CL Financial in July of this year and is expected to do major damage control.

Debt restructuring, he said, remains the priority of those working to bring the company back to its former glory but there will eventually be some shrinkage of the overall package to maximise profitability.

Bideshi’s management scope covers about $15 billion assets and does not include CLICO and the Clico Investment Bank (CIB).

Speaking mainly on Home Construction Ltd (HCL) and Angostura, Bideshi said these companies were without competitors in their field and were expected to recover nicely.

Angostura, he said, was already on its way to recovery while the HCL priority was the completion of One Woodbrook Place-the company’s massive and massively beleaguered upscale housing project.

’The issue here is leverage. Time and proper management are what they need,’ Bideshi said, adding that these elements were needed by CL Financial as a whole. He said inter-company debt was one of the top problems to be resolved within the group but dimissed the notion tha assets could have been scuttled off to various buyers.

While there will eventually be some selling, the company’s core assets will remain and it is possible that the CL Financial of the future will have a limited range of insurance, with the focus instead on its drinks company and real estate, Bideshi said.

He also advocated the involvement of the private sector in helping change the company’s fortunes.

’We are asking the private sector to co-invest,’ he said.

’Private equity has to step in-get involved, you have a role to play. Don’t allow the foreign companies to get all the action,’ he said, criticising the sector for a ’lack of innovation’ and a too-laid-back attitude.

’When I look back at Trinidad and Tobago over the past few months, I see a shortage of issuers,’ he said. ’The dominant player is still the Government. There has been no marked movement of innovation in the last five years.’

Bideshi also predicting subdued growth in the developed markets over the next two years and noted that that local institutions and the Central Bank have begun to reduce interest rates-which presents many opportunities for local investors.

He predicted, too, that both interest rates and inflation will continue to fall.

’The major threat is to sit back and wait on the Government as the dominant issuer,’ he admonished.