Ryland Campbell wins Observer Business Leader Awar

[Hopyoneson]

His story is also in coolbeans archived thread. I thought the owner of Glorianna would have been a good choice also. But congrats to him.



Ryland Campbell (right), executive chairman and principal shareholder of Capital & Credit Financial Group, accepts the Jamaica Observer Business Leader 2005 award from the Observer's chairman Gordon "Butch" Stewart at last night's presentation banquet at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in Kingston. Campbell won the award from a field of seven excellent nominees. (Photo: Joseph Wellington)

[CeaBee]

Re: Ryland Campbell wins Observer Business Leader Awar

Do they have all the nominees profiled somewhere?

maybe we could feature them here..

[Hopyoneson]

Re: Ryland Campbell wins Observer Business Leader Awar

Dat sound like a good idea, I dont think they were featured on the site so lets do it. [img]/forums/images/graemlins/70409-waytogo.gif[/img]

[Hopyoneson]

Re: Ryland Campbell wins Observer Business Leader Awar

Here are the nominess

[CeaBee]

Re: Ryland Campbell wins Observer Business Leader Awar

where kgn 20 wid di profiles?

*tapping foot*

[Gen]

Re: Ryland Campbell wins Observer Business Leader Awar

the woman's info got cut off...oh a she a the gloriana one..

[Snuggles]

Re: Ryland Campbell wins Observer Business Leader Awar

WELL DESERVED.....I read this very intersting article on his a little while back [img]/forums/images/graemlins/70409-waytogo.gif[/img]
Ryland Campbell: the country teacher turned leading Jamaican banker

Observer Reporter
Wednesday, February 22, 2006



Within financial circles, Ryland Campbell stands out as an entrepreneur with a particularly steady pair of hands that safely navigated Capital & Credit Merchant Bank through Jamaica's most perilous financial sector crisis.


Ryland Campbell executive chairman, Capital & Credit group
The result of that delicate balance between risk-taking and old school caution, has been the emergence of an institution, that, after only 12 years in existence, has been churning out financial numbers that are the envy of the industry.

For 2005, the Capital and Credit group of which Campbell is executive chairman and principal shareholder, posted net profit of $1.16 billion, a 34 per cent improvement over the $864 million earned in 2004.
That profit translated into return on average equity of 30.77 per cent, more than twice that earned by those investors holding government instruments that year.

Yet, another key index of the meteoric rise of this company, and the sustainability of its performance, is the shareholder equity - which, from a modest $20 million in January 1994 when the bank began, reached $4.67 billion at the end of December 2005.
The stock market currently values Capital and Credit at $13.18 billion, or roughly three times book. Year-end total assets amounted to $52.88 billion.

Yet, these numbers, as auspicious as they are, do not adequately reflect the mystical, qualitative flavour to the leadership that this 63-year-old entrepreneur has brought to the banking group.


Senior executives in the boardroom. From left: Edmond Marsh, senior vice-president, corporate planning and development; Ann Hutchinson, vice-president and principal operating officer; Andrew Cocking, Campbell, Curtis Martin, Rosalie Deane, senior vice-president and chief technology officer. Michael Lee, vice-president, asset management and research.

But, perhaps paradoxically, Campbell and the team of investors who set out to buy into the banking sector in 1993, had the good fortune of having available to them, only a merchant bank that was mired in bankruptcy, and whose name had become a pariah in banking.

That institution - Tower Merchant Bank - provided the new principals - Andrew Cocking, Jamaica Broilers Group, Davon Corporation, and Weststar, a financial company led by Campbell - with a virtual roadmap of how not to conduct business.
"We decided from day one that we were not going to get into the business of real estate," said Campbell, with the characteristic firmness for which he is noted.

That was lesson number one.
"We decided that at least in the early stages, we would go light on loans, because with those interest rates, customers would not be able to pay us back. We decided to stick to government paper."

The subtler, yet more far-reaching, policy was that of creating a collegiate decision-making structure - for fundamental matters - a policy, which, according to Campbell, helped the nascent institution avoid the power centralisation that contributed to the mistakes that became a feature of the sector later in the decade.


Campbell in the banking hall with customer, Claudette Freckleton, and Donette Nelson, customer care associate.

"The idea was that you needed 80 per cent of the votes from among the principal shareholders for certain major decision," he said. "You therefore had to convince several people to go along with you."
The first challenge that faced the shareholders - Campbell as chairman, and Cocking as CEO - was to convince the distraught depositors in Tower to keep their $17 million in the bank, while the new owners tried to rebuild the institution.

"On January 24, 1994 when we opened for business, there was only miniscule withdrawals," says Campbell with a sense of relief. "It gave us confidence that depositors felt it was better off working with us."
Capital & Credit was in business.

The merchant bank had five employees, including its current CEO, Curtis Martin, and Cocking - crammed in an office characterised by Campbell as "a little cubicle on Holborn Road".
But, by his own proud acknowledgement, the modesty of the "little cubicle on Holborn Road", was nothing compared to humble beginnings of this country boy turned banker.

In that deep rural farming village of Carmel in St Elizabeth (near Darliston in Westmoreland) Ryland, the eldest of eight children of Reginald and Perlie Campbell learned the rudiments of good character that he says served him in his later years.

"There was no running water, no electricity," he remembers.
Water was stored in tanks that farmers would set up on their land with financing from the Ministry of Agriculture.
In the community, most families earned their living from sugar-cane, cash crops and dairy farming.

Including the Campbells.
The patriarch, Reginald, who died in 2002 at age 91, was as Ryland puts it, "a jack of all trades, one of those versatile persons". Among his stock in trade: a farmer, stock butcher, carpenter, and mason.

Perlie, the "homemaker" is now 82 and living in Santa Cruz where she and her now deceased husband bought a home and relocated in 1972.
"She managed a little grocery and meat shop," is how Campbell fondly remembers his mother of the early days.

Growing up in a village with limited options, the Carmel Moravian became what Campbell calls "the centre of my world in boyhood".
"I grew up in the church," he declares. "I was a scout, a boy singer in the church choir. I became assistant scoutmaster."
Carmel Primary School reinforced the strong religious values inculcated at home and church.

"It had a very strong background in religious education and principles of good conduct and behaviour," he claims. "Most of the students went to the church."

Country life also meant that, as the eldest sibling, Campbell had to help his father in butchering, milking cows, making breakfast for the family, helping in the shop, and general housework.
"I have run the gamut of doing those little chores as first child," he brims with pride. "This is when I learned my home skills - to clean the floor using the coconut brush and beeswax, and Kwaku bush as oil to give it a sheen."

With an obvious sense of gratitude, Campbell speaks about the foresight of his parents in insisting that all the children attend school every day, and the fact that "I can't recall ever going to bed hungry because we had fruits, food and obviously meat".

Even against the backdrop of such an agrarian culture, the little village was not devoid of intellectual stimulation. For example, Campbell remembers the family shop serving as the centre for public discourse - with World War 11 heroes regaling the entire community with their heroism - and returning British residents bragging about their exploits.

"There is a certain hardiness that you get in your development," he points out. "The values that my parents brought to the table were important. I can say without reservation that they taught and practised honesty and integrity in all facets of their lives."

After Campbell passed his local exams, he spent a year as a pre-trained teacher before heading off to Mico Teachers College in 1962, to pursue what for him, was his inescapable career path.

"When you grow up in rural Jamaica, there are not many choices that you are exposed to," he reflects. "I really wanted to become a teacher because of the esteem with which the teachers were held, and the leadership of people like Ralph Anglin who served as headmaster and lay preacher."

Like most of the other students, Campbell's college education was financed by the government. It was at Mico that the early leadership skills he displayed while growing up in Carmel began to really take shape.
Here, he got involved in almost every aspect of student life: volleyball, football, captain for Grants House, scoutmaster, and so on.

His time at Mico also coincided with the early period of naive post-independence optimism, where Jamaicans, and especially tertiary students, began to think that any and everything was now possible.
"We had a special feel about the turning point in our political life," he recalls. "One got a feeling of excitement during that period. We felt we had truly embarked upon a period of independence."

But there was also the rude awakening that nominal political independence had far from translated into real social and economic empowerment when a young Evon Blake dared to step into the swimming pool at the Mertle Bank Hotel.
The manager was reported to have flushed the water from the pool.
This was a seminal moment for Campbell and some of his colleagues at Mico.

Suddenly, the road to independence had gotten more complicated.
"Mertle Bank was not a place where black people could go to and socialise," he offers.

After graduation, Campbell headed back to
Carmel, taking a teaching job at Chantilly Primary School three miles from his home. He continued his involvement in social life.
By 1966, with a salary of £525 per annum, the thrifty, ambitious teacher was able to save enough to pay down half the purchase price on his first car - a three-year-old Austin Cambridge he bought for £400 from a tailor in Siloah.

He borrowed the balance from Scotiabank in Black River.
Campbell still remembers the licence plate number: S2627.
In 1967 this budding teacher made an aborted attempt at switching career, to an insurance salesman for Colonial Life Insurance. But the stentorian objection of his mother forced him to reconsider the offer from the firm.

In preparation for the flashier career as a salesman he had sold the Austin for £450, and bought a one-year-old Corsair GT "with soft clutch, red leatherette interior, and which purred when it started" from Caledonia Motors in Cross Roads.
"I remember using the seat belt as style rather than safety," he lets on. "I saw returning residents using it, and it looked stylish. I thought it was a good idea to look successful with a flashy car."

But with his plan to switch career scuttled by his mother, Campbell found himself back in the classroom, this time at St Elizabeth Technical High.
Here is how he recalls that event.

"I arrived on the premises without notice and greeted principal Jasper Wray, who was my house master at Mico... He said, 'If you want the job, the job is yours. I will rely on you to deliver'."

He started teaching first and second form students, but quickly moved to teaching the exam batch when their geography teacher left.
"I am proud to say students delivered the best results," he says. "I had built the communication relation with students which made them enjoy learning."

There was one big advantage in being at Steths: one of his two younger brothers Audley, was attending the school "and I was closer to him to oversee what he was doing".
Campbell also sold his car "and started walking again".

This budding community-spirited teacher continued his involvement in a wide range of activities including the school savings programme of which he became chairman for the parish, the citizens association, the National Savings Committee of which he was parish vice-chairman.
"The school savings programme was an important part of fostering savings," he explains. "The students were learning to manage savings."

He said the position "taught me how to deal with powerful people even when you are leading them".

In 1971 Campbell left the classroom to become a child care officer for one year, and the following year, an executive officer for the St Elizabeth office of the Bureau of Regional Affairs. This travelling job allowed him the indulgence of a brand new Fiat 124 special for which he paid $2,400.
He grabbed the opportunity to get into mainstream banking, when in 1974 he took a job at the newly formed Workers Bank, selling payroll savings - the same year he got married to Arlene.

At Workers, Campbell began to race up the corporate ladder: from business development representative, to officer, to being in charge of the programnme by 1978.

In 1979 Workers opened a branch at Black River, and the general manager Elsworth Williams offered Campbell the job as manager.
"The GM said that I was unanimously endorsed by the managers to take over the Black River branch," he told the Business Observer. "I thanked them for the endorsement but declined the promotion, because I wanted to complete the course I had started at university."

More promotion was in the offing: credit officer at the Half-Way-Tree branch, then manager at the newly opened Maxfield Plaza branch, followed by a posting at Tower Street, the main branch as assistant manager under Winston Dwyer.

In 1981 Campbell was promoted to assistant general manager of loan administration at Workers, but by then, he had got the first sting of the entrepreneurial bug.

"I began to think that it was time for me to pursue a financial path which my father promoted, that of independence," he noted. "I was not quite sure what it would be but the voice was urging me."
That bug took Campbell to the rent-a-car business - first with two Corollas he acquired from United Motors in 1982. He had wanted four.
At the same time, he began to acquire real estate, starting with the apartment at Ravers where he lived, and for which he paid $60,000 "fully furnished".

In 1983 he was invited by Elon Beckford to join Citizens Bank where he served as general manager for the trust and merchant bank. Later, he became assistant general manager for credit administration at the bank, while remaining managing director of the trust company.

By then Campbell had set up a car rental company with independent employees, with the knowledge of his bosses who he said, told him "it's ok as long as you do not use the bank's time".
Other investment opportunities began to present themselves.

"By 1983 I began to venture into the stock market, something I had never done before. I started investing for the merchant bank and my own account."

Campbell recalls Mark Ricketts and John Jackson as being at the forefront of encouraging investment in the market.
"It was my best experience in investing," he says.
Other acquisitions came by the way - like a second home, this time in Jacks Hill, upper St Andrew.

"It was the accretion from those investment that I used to start the Weststar," says Campbell of the vehicle he eventually used to take a stake in Capital & Credit.
"The intention was for Weststar to become a lease finance company and then apply to BOJ for merchant bank licence."

Campbell remembers the period - the late 1980s to the early 1990s as a boom time for the financial services sector - which by then had swelled to over 30 merchant banks.

"I was seeking to go on my own at a high point at Citizens," he said. "This was a period of encouragement to people of my ilk to be leader in business. We did our market research which formed the basis of our submission to the BOJ."

Weststar started out at Cargill Avenue in Kingston in 1989, and after a few months, with support and encouragement from Danny Williams, moved to 6 Dominica Drive in New Kingston.
Weststar secured a credit line of $5 million from Life of Jamaica to begin its lease financing business. Later another $5 million came from Victoria Mutual.

"We did leases for small car rental companies, and others in the manufacturing business," he said.
By then Campbell, whose rent-a-car company Columbus Car had started in 1986 had grown to a fleet of 20.
In between, he experimented with a trading business, but quickly exited the market, and came back to purse his core competency and interest: financial services.

"But by then banking licences were on hold with only
Intercontinental and Huntley Manhertz securing licences," he noted.
Changes in the car import policy in 1993 marked the death knell of small companies like Columbus, which used to turn a profit by selling the cars after two years in service.

"The profit was not made from rental," explains Campbell. "It was made by keeping the car for two years and sell them back. The used-car opening was thee death knell of the small car rental business. Only large players remained. We disposed of the vehicle at a loss in 1993."

Campbell told the Business Observer that this development helped him to "clear my headspace so that by 1993 it was clear that I wanted to stay in the financial world: stock market investments and finance company."

That opportunity came when, in 1993 Tower Merchant and Trust Bank was placed in receivership, just a year after the collapse of Jamincorp.
No one knew at the time that these little-known failures were the prelude to a systemic banking crisis that would wipe out the indigenous industry, and cost the government billions of dollars.

"There were changes in ownership taking place especially with consolidation in commercial banks," Campbell pointed out.
For example:
. Citizens had two merchant bank licences and sold one to investors who formed Knutsford Capital.

. Delroy Lindsay who operated Corporate Merchant got another licence when he took over Workers. He sold that licence to Elon Beckford who formed Horizon Merchant.

. Island Life bought Lival Investments and called it Island Life Merchant Bank.
. Dyoll bought DCO from Dunn Cox and Orette which became Dyoll Merchant.

"We did not see any opening," Campbell laments. "In addition, the Ministry of Finance had become hardened to the view that persons who owned the licence should not be allowed to trade them. So after the initial burst no other licences were sold or purchased."

But in Tower's failure, there was an opportunity to be grasped.
"A group of persons wanted to rescue the bank and a friend in discussions with Broilers, Davon, Andrew Cocking told us about it," Campbell recalls. "Weststar said it was interested. We initially wanted controlling interest, but idea was shelved."
Campbell now says that this was one of the best decisions made as a model for ownership and control.

Here's how he explains it: "It was the best strategy by the group. The absence of controlling interest meant that we had to work together. We had a shareholders agreement that gave proportional representation on the board and placed specific circumstance on which minimum percentage support was required for certain decisions. It ensured that we needed teamwork.

"Most of the major decisions for which consensus was required needed 80 per cent support. Any of the four principal shareholders could prevent the decision. It ensured decisions which are not impulsive. It also generated personal and professional interest among shareholders in the institution."

The $30 million injected into the institution by the investors eliminated the deficit and left the bank with the statutory minimum capital requirement of $20 million.

"It took us from July 1993 to December 1993 in a series of negotiations and documentation to arrive at how we would resolve the issue of the parlous state of the company," he said.

"We had to get BOJ and Ministry of Finance approval. Governor (Jacques) Bussiere had experienced failure in Zambia. He had to be satisfied that the team had knowledge and resources to make it work."
The money was injected into the bank through a vehicle formed by the investors called Capital & Credit Holding.

The merchant bank was profitable literally, from day one, and immediately began expanding into a wide range of revenue generating services.
Foreign currency trading was the first to be added.

"At the time only commercial banks were authorised dealers," noted Campbell. "We had to use the association to lobby for BOJ to open up the fx market. We got that and were able to trade in a lucrative part of the market."

By 1995 remittance was added through partnership with Ria Express that gave the bank a toehold in Cayman.
The bank later formed C&C Remittance Ltd after Ria in the USA and the Caymanian partners severed their partnership.

"We started to look to UK and USA for other partners,' he said. "Then we formed Express Remittance in Cayman in which we own 40 per cent. We have 8,000 transactions per month from Cayman."
Later, the securities company - with a seat on the Jamaica Stock Exchange - gave Capital & Credit another revenue stream.
"We wanted to position ourselves as the leading merchant bank in Jamaica with wide range of options."

According to Campbell, public listing should have taken place in 1999/2000 but the sale by Davon of its shareholding forced the postponement. The NIF bought Davon's 27 per cent in 2000.
Even the public listing in 2003 had its challenges, he says.

"The Solicitor-general took ill when we were about to go pubic," he says. "At the same time, the exchange rate started to move and BOJ moved the interest rate from 18 to 34 per cent. Investor backed out at the last minute - with their guaranteed return at 34 per cent. We had to beat the pavement and worked on them."

But the IPO which was marginally under-subscribed, has been Jamaica's most successful ever - with the price racing from $5 to over $30 within months, and now settles in the low $20s.

Last year, the bank raised just over $1 billion in a rights issue that will help to fund its expansion plans.

"We are looking to establish a presence in a major English-speaking Caribbean market and in Florida in 2006," Campbell tells the Business Observer. "That will give us the kind of range of products and getting us access to the Diaspora. We are also looking at alliances to strengthen distribution channels."

Adds Campbell: "Our success is largely because of the people we have on our team and the resilience and commitment that we have applied at all levels in the management of the organisation.

"We at Capital and Credit have a stubbornness not to retreat, because to retreat is to tell yourself that you can't handle challenges."

[Hopyoneson]

Re: Ryland Campbell wins Observer Business Leader Awar






"I was a very meticulous youngster," is his memory of his early childhood. "My grandfather would give me tasks to do. Tasks that would be big man's task, like farming, horseback riding, follow him early mornings to the sugar mill. I was a fearless kid who was actually his aid."

That man - his maternal grandfather and earliest mentor - was Zacuus Hill, a Jewish molasses processor, and coffee farmer, who along with his Scottish wife Edith, moulded the impressionable Shirley while his mother Merlyn Shirley was away in England working as a nurse.

The result of this Imperial intervention was a confident, and some would say brash, youngster who by age six, and now reunited with his mother in Kingston, felt he could become anything he wanted.

But he had his preference.
"From I knew myself I wanted to do engineering; there is no question about it," remarks Shirley. "I could recall at Mico Practising School reading books about engineering and particularly chemical engineering."

Here is how Shirley remembers himself at the time he landed at St Andrew Technical High School (STATHS): "I was a very tough, very brazen, very assertive and very confident youngster. I was inspired by my grandfather."
From those early days, it seems the world was at Shirley's feet.

But his mother had a tempering impact on his life. A strict disciplinarian, she often insisted on industry and hard work at home as a trade-off for allowing the high-energy teenager the freedom to party and hangout with friends.

"To go out after school you had to perform a task that justified this privilege - from painting the house to cleaning the car," explained Shirley.


Tanny Shirley greets longtime Mitchell's Auto customer, Keith Nichols.

"Those tasks were skill oriented and my mother was not impressed easily," he added. "Whatever I did had to be 100 per cent perfect. There was no room for error. This developed values in me to be responsible, and to have multifunctional skills."

At STATHS Shirley was form captain and prefect, and said he declined the position of head boy because "it would cramp my style".

On his external he gained distinction in all the science subjects, and landed a full scholarship to study in the UK.
But one of two brothers Roderick - ten years - his senior, invited Shirley to live with him in Chicago, the city that had the distinction of having America's number one ranked engineering university - Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT).
It took four separate exams for Shirley to be admitted to this prestigious school - the first black student.

"I was the first black student to be accepted there," said Shirley with obvious ambivalence. "It was very difficult because I had to take four entry exams."

He immediately charmed his way to a job in the foreign dean's office - delivering letters to the lecturers, giving him not just money to augment his stipend from home, but an opportunity to meet the various lecturers, many of whom later became his friends.

It was an intellectually stimulating environment, but during that period of the early 1970s, America was still in the throes of racial tension, and universities across the country became a flashpoint for these contradictory forces.

"Four of my professors were part of the space shuttle programme," he beams. "Almost all of the engineering class the material was written by the professors."

Yet, it was that same institution that provided young Shirley's most graphic and memorable confrontation with racism. One professor, during a thermo-dynamics lecture, bluntly declared that a question raised in class could not be answered by a black person for the fatuous reason that "it is not a question that black people are usually capable of answering".

"Eventually I became known on campus not as the black guy, but the Jamaican," quips Shirley.

That period produced other gems that had a lifelong impact on Shirley. One such case was working as a dishwasher alongside a university lecturer at a Chinese restaurant, on the late shift.

"The guy washing late with me was a lecturer at another university. It was then that I realised that there was pride in washing plate."

During his second year, Shirley landed an off-campus job as a research analyst with Continental Can analysing paints. Here, he was part of the team that created the first coated ultraviolet can - drying of paints at high speed.

In his third year he worked as a research analyst at Armak Chemical plant - one of the largest facilities of its kind in the USA - that made material for road development.

Shirley was not without a social life in America's windiest city. He developed and indulged his passion for automobiles - buying old cars, modifying them for drag racing. Among his prized collection: a Corvette and a Chrysler Baracuda, "a 340 turbo engine monster of a car," as he puts it.

After graduating in 1976 Shirley accepted a job with Armak as a junior engineer, and within six months was promoted twice to become a grade two engineer, where he worked directly with the chief engineer.

"But I felt homesick," he said. "I was eager to come back as in the USA I did not have anybody to share my job recognition with."
Shirley also had another very strong motivation to return to Jamaica.

For, while in fourth form at STATHS he had met a St Hugh's High beauty, Madge Beckford who became his girlfriend.
"Madge and I were very close," he said. "We spent a lot of time writing each other."
The nostalgia was therefore not surprising.
"Honestly, I wanted to come home and get married," he lets on. "She was very well cultured."

Shirley has fond memory of Madge posting to him a cake she had baked.

"I remember it got lost in the mail. I got it three months after it was sent and by then it was full of 'junjo'. I scraped off the 'junjo' and ate the cake!"

Shirley and Madge were married within months of his return to Jamaica.

Her parents operated the auto supply firm, Beckford's Auto Supplies (later renamed Carlton's), which was located across the road from St Andrew Technical.

It became a platform for Shirley on his arrival in Jamaica.
"I learned the business inside out from clearing goods, to the banking side, to negotiating deals, selling parts, I knew everything," he says. "My father-in-law was a master at the auto parts industry. He was very witty. It was like a second university."

Shirley said that the experience at Beckford's Auto reinforced his early childhood culture of always striving for excellence in service, and one that placed value on customer care.
"He launched me as a no-nonsense businessperson," he says of Beckford. "My whole upbringing was about honesty, details, respect for people."

Within six months of joining Beckford's, the owners of Hagley's Auto Supplies, then a small retailer on Spanish Town Road near Three Miles, indicated to him their desire to sell the business.

"I met the Changs while they were customers of Carlton's and we became friends because of the level of service they got," said Shirley. "They confided to me they wanted to leave Jamaica -they would give me a one-year payment plan."

The year was 1977, and Jamaica was at the height of the Michael Manley regime's experimentation with democratic socialism. The Changs were part of the 1970's socio-political statistic: the long list of business class exodus from Jamaica.
But Shirley found in the Changs offer, an opportunity for a toehold in business, and grasped it with both hands.
"Without hesitation I told them yes," he said.

He worked with the Changs for a three-month familiarisation period after which he took over the auto store.
Hagley's had three employees and operated from a rented zinc roof building near Three Miles. It was, at the time, a minion in the auto parts industry.

Shirley was able to pay off the Changs in eight months.
At the time his wife was still working at her father's auto parts company, but Shirley resolved to build his business on service.

He cited an example, of how that mantra played out in practical terms: "Recently, I discovered a bill from the 1970s where I made a personal delivery of points and condenser worth 59 cents to a customer."

Shirley broadened that concept of service to include the volatile community in which the company was located, by immediately adopting one of their schools.

"The people were fantastic," he said. "We were the first business to adopt a school in the community. There was never an incident."

Hagley's Auto imported most of its parts from the USA, and sourced items from big importers like T Geddes Grant. Parts for Morris Oxford, Ford Cortina, and in particular Vauxall, dominated his stock.

The youthfulness of this entrepreneur and his lack of entrenchment in this dynamic and changing market, paradoxically were among his greatest assets - allowing him to respond quickly to changes in market demand.

For example, unburdened by massive dead stock, Hagley's was able to quickly move into American car parts, and then in the late 1970s and into the 1980s Ladas, followed by Japanese, in line with market trends.
"We just kept on being current," he said. "The business started to grow immediately."

In the early days of operating Hagley's, Shirley would still assist his father-in-law at Carlton's, but had to discontinue in 1981, "as the demand grew on Hagley's".

That year, his wife left her father's company and joined her husband in the business, a decision which, according to Shirley, created tension within her family.

So rapid was the growth at Hagley's that by the late 1970s the Shirleys were able to secure a $30,000 mortgage from Victoria Mutual to buy their first house - located on an acre of land in the Upper St Andrew community of Grosvenor Heights.

As with the case of Hagley's, the Shirleys were again the beneficiaries of the middle class exodus from Jamaica.

By 1981 Shirley was able to purchase the building and the front section of the land on which Hagley's was located, paying $60,000 from a combination of loans, and the profit generated by the business.

The following year, when he began contemplating the first major expansion at Hagley's, Shirley paid $110,000 for the back section of the land.

"We paid the landlady above-market for the land because we needed it for expansion," he said.
By then, Hagley's had 14 employees, annual sales of between $9 and $10 million, and was among the top 10 in the auto parts industry.

The industry at the time was dominated by names like Teddy's, Carlton's and Daytona. But with the relatively modest lifestyle of the Shirleys, and their policy of plowing back all profits into the business, Hagley's continued to grow. So much so, that by1983 Shirley was able to borrow $2 million to begin to expand and truly reposition the company in the auto parts market.

By funding the construction of a 26,000 square-foot storage, display, and customer service area, and a wide range of stock, this investment in a short while propelled Hagley's to the number five spot in the market.

"We were doing exceptionally well," noted Shirley. "We were within the top-five auto parts company."

Having secured a strong foothold in the auto parts market, and put in place a well-organised management structure headed by Madge, Shirley fell confident that it was time to venture into other businesses.

Here again, there was a sentimental edge to his motivation.
"My mother was infuriated to learn that his engineer son had decided to sell car parts for a living. We had a rift for a few months."

This new venture would kill two proverbial birds with one stone.

Here is how Shirley explains this next move: "Almost concurrently with the expansion at Hagley's, I felt that having settled down in the auto parts business I should go back to my love and to appease my mother that I did not abandon my education."

Shirley identified a 12,000 square-foot building at Newport West that once housed a garment factory, got a bank loan, and bought it from Norton Taylor. He converted it into a chemical factory that he called Shirlhome Chemical.

"We secured the bank loan largely on the strength of our business plan, management, and our history of repayment," boasted Shirley. "We could have secured any loan based on our repayment history."

Shirlhome started off with 12 employees, to manufacture own-brand products - the Wonder-O brand of household chemicals.

The strategy was to go after the retail market with a marketing distribution network that involved a 350-strong islandwide sales force.

It literally worked wonders, at least in the short term.
"We did excellent in terms of sales," recalls Shirley. "We were the first chemical company to come up with a self-shine floor polish."

But Shirlhome became a victim of its rapid success: the internal accounting and management systems were simply inadequate to cope with such a large sales force, and to manage the receivables.

"Then we ran into a receivables problem," says Shirley. "In some cases there were no addresses. Controlling 350 sales rep was a task. We just did not have the systems in place to facilitate the growth in the demand for the products."
It was his first expensive lesson in business.

"We had to write off bad debt," he acknowledges. "We took a year to phase out the retail system."

Having abandoned that business model, the focus was shifted to supermarkets, hospitals, and institutions, and later on, a distributorship agreement - with Facey Commodity.
Shirley said that the Wonder-O line of household products became a major selling item for Facey.

In 1987 Shirlhome acquired just over one acre of land on Hagley Park Road, to build a modern chemical plant.
At the time, Colgate was the big competitor in Jamaica for household products. Diversy Wyandott and Henkel were also among the biggest names in the business, with Swift Chemical and Shirlhome "fighting for space", as Shirley puts it.

It took $6 million to build the type of plant that Shirley had envisaged.
"We wanted to build the most modern chemical plant in Jamaica," he says. "With my experience, we wanted something that was going to be environmentally friendly for years ahead."

Shirley hired Evon Williams to design what he describes as "the most complete manufacturing plant - for production, marketing, and staff environment".
He then sold the building at Newport West.

"Shirlhome was by then established as one of the first modern buildings to transform Hagley Park Road and started to move real estate value there," said Shirley.
That development did not escape Shirley for he himself had by then developed what he describes as "a passion for real estate".

At the same time, he was also a frequent visitor to international trade shows which exposed him to the world of commodities.

So, as far back as 1984 he had started Tan Marj Investments, to procure products like uniform and other security items for the police and the army.

"That company was created because of my exposure to international market," he explains. "It was an investment company that acquired commodities for other companies."
His interest in real estate led him to purchase several pieces of land including several acres on Waterloo Road in Kingston with 37 cottages and a great house. He paid $400,000 for the property in 1986, and sold it for $1.6 million in 1989.

"By this time I was working 18 hours per day," says Shirley. "But it was like eight hours because I was constantly driven by passion. I am a very competitive person, so everything I went into I aimed to make it into the number one."
In developing the business, Madge concentrated on the chemical company, and Shirley the auto parts business. Shirlhome also employed Barbara McMillan to be in charge of production. She helped the company to expand to over 50 products.

"My wife was responsible for administration and finance, and I for the technical and marketing functions," he told the Business Observer. "We worked very well as a team in terms of vision. Our policy was to empower people who were strong in will."

Shirley's interest in real estate was not confined to Kingston. In 1987 be bought 30 acres of beachfront land next door to Sandals Dunn's River, in St Ann. With 1,500 running feet of beachfront, that property today remains one of the most valuable pieces of real estate on the north coast, with estimated market value of well over J$1 billion.

While he pursued his real estate acquisitions, and the chemical and auto parts company continued to develop, Shirley was yet to make one of his boldest moves.

This came in 1994 when Roy Mitchell, the proprietor of Mitchell's Auto Supplies on Hagley Park Road, decided that he wanted to sell the business and retire.

Mitchell had created Jamaica's leading auto supplies company, by introducing the first supermarket-type shopping experience for auto parts customers.

After learning from Mitchell that he wanted to cash out, Shirley "bolted down to the office and called my wife who was at Shirlhome at the time, and said to her, 'Roy is selling Mitchell's and I think we should acquire it'."
According to Shirley, Madge's response was "there you go again!"

Madge eventually promised to "think about it".
It was all that Shirley needed to hear.
"That same evening I went straight to NCB after hanging up the phone and said to the manager 'look here, I want to buy Mitchell's'."

Shirley's reading of the market trend was that Hagley Park Road would become the auto parts strip in Jamaica, so he wanted a presence there.

In fact, as Shirley acknowledged, his company began to feel the competitive pressure, when Roy Mitchell relocated his Mitchell's Auto Supplies on Hagley Park Road.
"He was a very serious threat," noted Shirley. "When he moved to Hagley Park he reduced our sale each year by at least 15 per cent."

Mitchell wanted $110 million for the business as a going concern - stocks, name - everything. Shirley offered $85 million, and they settled on $90 million.

"I went to NCB at 5:30 pm and told the bank manager how much and he said 'go ahead and type up the sales agreement'."

NCB provided 70 per cent of the funding, and Shirley the balance.

"We had a property on Belmont Road, where Hawkeye is now located and we put it up for sale and used the funds for the deposit," explained Mitchell. "We raised funds from other areas of our operation and within a week, signed a sales agreement to acquire Mitchell's."

Shirley said that Hagley's "immediately brought to Mitchell's our culture of service, combining it with their infrastructure".
Within two years of the acquisition, it was back to the drawing board. He needed money to fund another round of expansion.

"We wanted to expand again to make it a first world supermarket environment, with proper facility for staff, training rooms, play area for children and so on," said Shirley.

That expansion and market repositioning has been an ongoing project.

In 2002 Shirley closed down Hagley's Auto Supplies, and consolidated the business at the much more spacious real estate at Mitchell's.

The merger of the two operations was a prelude to a move by Shirley to create at one location, a comprehensive auto parts sales and services centre, that would offer the full range of auto-related services.

"The vision was to position Mitchell's as a one-stop auto mall or auto hub," he explains. "The facility of used parts, business centre for supporting arm of auto parts, banking, insurance valuation, recreational area, and the modern service centre to ensure that parts and accessories are installed in most efficient manner."

In pursuit of that vision, Shirley in 2003 acquired two acres of adjoining land on which Unipet service station used to operate.

"We went back to the drawing board to create not only the physical facilities but the environment," he said.
Over the following two years - 2003 to 2005 - Shirley invested US$3 million to develop what is arguably the most comprehensive auto centre anywhere in the world - including, a clean, well-organised air-conditioned used-parts section.

"The typical perception of a used parts operation is junkyard, so we changed that whole philosophy and offered enclosed building, with a/c for the convenience of customers," says Shirley. "Immediately on completion, it created dominance in the industry."

The result was the creation of a 80,000 square-foot one-stop auto service centre, spread across six acres of land, and which is manned by a staff of 110.

Among the services offered:

. 20-bay service centre;
. state-of-the-art wheel alignment, balancing;
. tyre change;
. diagnostic testing;
. engine and transmission change over;
. accessories installation, and a/c;
. electronic installation;
. insurance service from ICWI;
. bill payment service from Paymaster;
. 24-hour ATM from RBTT;
. Digicel centre; and
. Anbell facility.

Mitchell's also has a well-structured management core with a director of operations, director of administration, and director of finance. There is an operations manager, various managers and supervisors.

"We take customer service serious. It is like the blood that runs through our veins," he declares. "We have some of the best customer service staff in the business. We have almost weekly training session both internally and externally for all staff. Even security guards are specially picked from Guardsman."

On the road towards developing both Mitchell's and Shirlhome into major Jamaican household brands - Shirley has flirted with others businesses - and in some instances, with remarkable success.

For example, in 2001 he decided to venture into the haberdashery business, and built a retail outlet on land he owned on Hagley Park Road, for household haberdashery, targeting low-income customers.

"We wanted to bring downtown prices uptown and knew that with my exposure to the Far East it would be simple to put up the facility," says Shirley.

He started off with a 20,000 square-foot building, housing a full-scale supermarket and haberdashery, but was forced to add another 16,000 square feet within a year because of the growth in the business.

But there was a downside to this aggressive business expansion.

"At this point it became apparent that I was spreading really thin," Shirley admits. "I was still involved in all activities - travelling, marketing, construction, design."
So when GraceKennedy approached Shirley in 2003 to lease the property, and take over operation, the conglomerate found in Shirley a willing partner.

Grace established a Basix supermarket at the location and discontinued the haberdashery, but as a supermarket-only business, it did not quite met the company's expectation. Grace gave up the lease in less than two years.

The building has since been leased by Mainland International to house its main hardware, haberdashery and furniture outlet in Kingston.

Shirley has also had an aborted attempt at breaking into tourism in a big way.

In 1997, he began a development plan for the 30-acre beach land he owns near Sandals Dunn's River.

The plan was to build a 350-room hotel that would be merged with Sandals' Dunn's River and operated by Sandals, creating a 700-room property - the biggest in the Sandals chain.

"We decided it would be the ideal investment as part of our entrance into big boys league into hotel industry," noted Shirley. "But with interest rate so high it was not going to be prudent investment, and we had problems in securing the funding."

Estimated construction cost at the time was US$40 million.
Shirley says he is now in discussion with Spanish chains to partner in the development and operation of a hotel.

"We are now negotiating with several Spanish groups for joint venture development," he says. "We want to retain some level of ownership."

Still, with Mitchell's as Jamaica's unmistakable leader in the auto parts and services business, Shirley's current focus is on the continued vertical integration of his chemical company.

Already, Shirlhome makes 85 of the containers in which its chemicals are sold - thanks to the investment in a plastic manufacturing plant a few years ago. The company used to outsource 100 per cent of its bottles.

Additionally, in response to competition from overseas brands, Shirlhome, in 2001, developed eight outlets at which bulk chemicals can be bought at more economical price under the name Wholesalers Choice. These are located in Montego Bay, Savanna-la-Mar, May Pen, Mandeville, Portmore, and two in Kingston.

A few years ago, the company also added a janitorial division, further deepening its vertical integration.
As is the case with Mitchell's, Shirlhome operates with a well-defined management structure, with Madge Shirley as director of finance. Among its 250 members of staff are operations director, production manager, research manger, and marketing manager.

Shirley says that a "very good debt to equity portfolio" allows his companies to be profitable, and that there is no immediate plan to list on the stock market.

"Would want to look when the climate is right," he says, "when consumers are confident. We are not ruling it out."
Shirley has two daughters, Tanya, an English lecturer at the University of the West Indies, Mona, and Tanice who has a Masters in International Business and lives in Washington

[Hopyoneson]

Re: Ryland Campbell wins Observer Business Leader Awar

[ QUOTE ]
Shirley's interest in real estate was not confined to Kingston. In 1987 be bought 30 acres of beachfront land next door to Sandals Dunn's River, in St Ann. With 1,500 running feet of beachfront, that property today remains one of the most valuable pieces of real estate on the north coast, with estimated market value of well over J$1 billion.


[/ QUOTE ]

When I tell people on here to look at Jamaican real estate I am not lying cause we still under valued due to the crime ting, and the prices in certain parts, Gold Coast of Jamaica worth billions now, Trelawny is the next logical place from expansion going east and Lucea in the west.

[CeaBee]

Re: Ryland Campbell wins Observer Business Leader Awar

Thanks Kgn 20...me a goh save dis until me get home and can plot how fi mek mi first million [img]/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Hopyoneson]

Re: Ryland Campbell wins Observer Business Leader Awar



Ernie Smatt in front of his Shaw Park Hotel in Ocho Rios while (inset) a young Smatt is surrounded by some of the 150 water skiing trophies he has won.

As a businessman, Ernest 'Ernie' Smatt has always defied conventional wisdom - and has thrived for it.

Casual in his deportment, and seemingly unstructured in his approach, he is the antithesis of the corporate personality.
But don't' be fooled by his apparent shortcoming! For, this intellectually agile 73-year-old has been the maverick force behind some of Jamaica's best-known tourist attractions.
Moreover, with little name recognition beyond the confines of the tourism industry, he is one of Jamaica's best kept entrepreneurial secrets.

What is no secret however, are the tourism brands that he has developed over the past five decades, and in doing so, the positive impact he has had on the industry.



At the heart of his operation is the Ocho Rios-based Water Sports Enterprises - a firm that for the past 40 years has been Jamaica's foremost provider of water sports activities for adventurous visitors to the island.

Water Sports Enterprises employs 80 workers, most of them to operate the 20 or so boats that are integral to the wide range of activities on offer. Among them:

. scuba diving;
. deep sea fishing;
. sunset cruises;
. coastline cruses to Dunn's
River Falls;
. yacht and boat charters;
. sailing, kayaking;
para-sailing;
. wave running and jet
skiing; and
. snorkelling.

Smatt's Brimmer Hall Estate is another of those iconic, must-see tour spots - a sprawling, 350-acre Portland property that woos visitors and locals alike with its lush greenery, and undulating topography.


Smatt speaks with Marie McDonald, manager of San San bistro restaurant and beach, located on 10 acres of beachfront on which Smatt plans to have a hotel development.
Here, 50 individuals, including farmers and operators of 15 jitneys - each with capacity for 25 passengers - are employed. They provide guided tours of the farm and surrounding attractions to cruise ship passengers and stop-over tourists.


Smatt at the scenic Shaw Park Gardens. This property is slated for expansion.

"We have created a Disney World attractions there," boasts Smatt.

The Shaw Park Hotel and Shaw Park Gardens, undoubtedly the two operations in the group with the most brand recognition, are relatively recent acquisitions.

With the purchase Smatt became a player in Jamaica's mainstream tourism industry. The 90-room property which sits on 30 acres of land employs 130 workers.
Last year, Smatt invested US$3 million to refurbish and reposition the hotel in the market.

"We made a serious impact on the local market," he said. "We pay just as much attention to Jamaica tourists as to North America and Europe."

Shaw Park Gardens, a 15-room hotel that sits on several acres of lush gardens and waterfalls is also undergoing an upgrade.

"We are currently working on the rooms at Shaw Park Gardens and may operate it independently or an annex to the beach hotel and spa", explained Smatt.
There are 15 workers at this property.

Yet another major asset is the nine-hole San San golf course, also in Portland - 70 acres of verdant beauty that is the crown jewel of a 710-acre land owned by Smatt, and on which he plans a major development.
These are not just isolated pieces of real estate that only share a common ownership. Together, they represent a harmonious and vertically integrated tourism operation being driven by this forward-thinking entrepreneur.

In this model of tourism development, serene estate tours, thrilling sea adventures, and relaxed golfing draw "synergy" as Smatt puts it, from the hotel, and each other.

"Our farm at Brimmer Hall is a major supplier of produce to Shaw Park Hotel," he notes. "The properties get synergy from each other."

But Smatt acknowledges that the golf course, damaged by Hurricane Ivan in September 2004, has faced challenges in turning a profit.

"It is now playable, but it remains heavily subsidised," he complains. "It has never made any money, and has been a constant source of drain."

But there is a turn-around plan for this prime, but non-performing piece of real estate. This, according to Smatt, involves the construction of villas and apartments, and a 150-room hotel on the 10-acre beach site. It will require investment of around US$30 million.

"The concept at San San is to develop the golf course and help to promote tourism," he says.

How this entrepreneur maintains such high level of enthusiasm, and energy to be still driving his company after 50 years can be explained, in part, by his childhood.
Smatt tells the Business Observer that as a child, he knew he did not want to work for anyone.

What he did not know however was that as a young adult - with a lanky 6 ft 2 inch frame - he would parlay his extraordinary gift at water skiing into an important enterprise.
The last of seven boys, Smatt was born in Prospect, Port Antonio, where his father Charles, a merchant from Beruit, and mother, Selma Ayoub, from Demascus, had settled down after a brief stint on King Street in Kingston.

"My father was a travelling person who lived in places like Bermuda, Newfoundland, and New York," he recalls. "But he came to Jamaica as a young man and fell in love with the island and decided that this is where he is going to settle down."

The family - all nine members - lived upstairs the two-storey building that housed the haberdashery/dry goods business operated by the Smatts on West Street in Port Antonio.

Smatt attended Titchfield - elementary and secondary schools, in Port Antonio, and remembers himself as being "just an average kid who loved sports going to school".
He began working in the family store from his mid-teens, where he developed the strong work ethics that he said served him so well later in his own business.
Smatt said that he was also inspired by his father's social consciousness, and the sense of balance that was inculcated at home.

"He was a very social-minded person, he was always doing things for the poor people." He says of his father. "But he was very strict. I was quite a well-behaved kid. I was on the football team in school. I had an average education. I was no wiz kid."

Smatt saved enough money from the stipend he earned at the family store to buy himself a small English car.
But in a display of maturity and an uncommon sense of purpose, this youngster saw the car as his ticket to the adult world of economic independence.

Young Smatt was now in the rental car business.
"One of the first persons I rented it to was Katherine Hepburn," he declared with an obvious sense of pride. "She was staying at Titchfield Hotel and I rented it for two weeks. I made myself a good change."

Smatt also has recollection of the political ferment of the period - with Jamaica's premier Sir Alexander Bustamante being a frequent visitor to his home, and being mesmerised by "Busta's incredible charisma".

His father later became a Jamaica Labour Party councillor, and for 15 years served as the chairman of Portland Parish Council.

Another of the personalities that young Smatt met as a youngster, and who had an impact on him was the filmmaker Errol Flynn, during one of his many jaunts to the unspoiled tourism resort in the early 1950s.

"Flynn had around him a lot of good-looking ladies and had an infectious style," says Smatt. " I personally admired his style."

It was this American filmmaker who introduced Smatt to water skiing - the sport that would ultimately transform his life.
But there were others to meet, and to make their mark on him.

One such individual was Stewart Sharp, the general manager of Silver Seas hotel.

"Sharp asked me if I could assist him at the hotel, and I told him that my objective was not to work for anyone," said Smatt.

But this savvy, opportunistic youngster found a way that both interests could be served. For by this time, he had developed a fleet of three rent-a-cars and a limousine and realised that the transportation concession at Silver Seas could serve his interest.

He struck a deal with Sharp for the concession in exchange for working as his assistant, for free. Smatt was about 22 years old at the time.

"I enjoyed the environment," he says. "There were lots of attractive people around which suited my interest."
Back then, the main hotels in Ocho Rios were Jamaica Inn, the old Shaw Park, and Couples.

"Silver Seas had a large fishing boat, and Stewart and I invented tours to Dunn's River Falls for private party with all hotel guests abroad," says Smatt.

That was the beginning of his interest in attractions.
But it took an incident at the hotel involving taxi drivers, that forced him to sell his limousines (he had three by then) and to launch himself into the water sports business.
"With the money that I made from selling the limousines, I bought myself a speedboat and started the water sports business."

By then Smatt was a proficient water skier, and had developed a solid reputation as a world class teacher of the sport. He had a toe in with the Hollywood jet setters who frequented Jamaica.

Smatt's ambition of make big business out of water skiing, took him to Jamaica's tourist capital, Montego Bay where he hoped to secure hotel concessions for his water sports business.

But the road ahead would be a little more challenging than the naïve youngster could have imagined.
"No matter how hard I tried I could not get any hotel to sign up with me," he lamented. "That is where the struggle started."

Left with little options, Smatt built a large floating platform off Doctor's Cave beach in Montego Bay.
Water Sports Enterprises was in business.
It did not take long for word to get around that a very special water skier was in town.

"Though I had no concession my operation was a major success," he says. "I took on water ski seriously. It became the fastest growing sport in the world - everybody in the world was water skiing, and I was a beneficiary."
Smatt's training to perfect his art paid off not only in business but in the sport. He became Jamaica's champion for six consecutive years, and represented the West Indies in skiing championships. He accumulated 150 trophies over many decades as a participant in the sport - reflecting in his dominance of all the divisions in which he competed.

"The reason for the success of the business is that I was good at what I was doing," he said. "I was the best."
Nevertheless, in this business, there were seasonality challenges to overcome, given Jamaica's relatively small, and nascent tourism market.

Smatt had to find a way to keep busy all-year-round, in what was essentially a winter market.
"I formed an alliance with a friend in Miami which allowed me to teach skiing in Miami in the summer and return to Jamaica in the winter," he explained. "I started as a junior in Miami and became master. I used to teach up to 60 people per day to ski. I had a great following."

But by the mid-1950s Smatt, through bank loans, had expanded his company into a broad-scale water sports operation, offering tourists a wide range of boating activities.
In those early days of Jamaica's tourism, this young water skier-turned businessman found himself at the forefront of a new sub-sector within that industry.

"I pioneered all boating activities and not less than 80 per cent of all the attractions," he declares. "All the rich and famous came to the raft. They sought us out."
Smatt returned to St Ann in 1957, where for the next three years he secured the concession to operate from the Arawak Hotel - now Sandals Dunn's River.

Even today, Smatt relishes in the memory of how he won that contract.

"The manager of the hotel told the owner that I was a lady's man and that he should not give me the concession. But the owner said, 'well, that is exactly the guy I am looking for'."
Under the concession agreement, Smatt was required to pay the hotel a small rental for the right to operate from the property.

It was here he remembers, that he met Betty - an American diving champion, who he later married.

For the three years at Arawak he and his wife partnered to put on "the most incredible water shows in the sea and in the pool".

When the hotel changed ownership, Smatt relocated his business to Americana and the Hyatt - now called Jamaica Grande.

It has operated from there since that time.
"By then we had a fleet of fishing boats and speed boats for the variety of sports," says Smatt.

But the early 1970s is remembered as a period of challenges, with the depression in Jamaica's tourism market following the victory of Michael Manley at the polls in 1972.
Smatt says that though he spent time in Hollywood during this period, he still operated his business and later in the decade, took advantage of the middle class exodus by acquiring properties on the cheap.

"It became a struggle to live in Jamaica," he says. "We could not make payments on the boats. Citibank was our banker and had to restructure the loans and after a few months we still could not make the payments."

But Smatt eventually repaid the debt, and attributes this success to his strong determination, and Citibank's commitment to see his company through its hiccup.
"We decided that the bank had loaned us the money in good faith, and we were therefore not prepared to declare bankruptcy," he said. "Citibank changed the whole face of banking in Jamaica. from old colonial and oppressive institution to one that loaned on the basis of cash flow."
The late 1970s and into the early 1980s was a period of active asset acquisition.

First, an 80-acre lot just to the east of Mammee Bay. Smatt later sold it and used part of the profit to purchase 12 acres of land to the eastern side of Dunn's River Falls.

He resold the land in the early 1980s on the request of the government, which claimed at the time that the land was slated to be part of a major tourism development.
The early 1980s was his most acquisitive period.
Properties bought included Brimmer Hall estate on which banana, sugar, pineapple, pumpkin, cocoa, and coconuts were grown.

But Smatt said that praedial larceny, unreliable market, and weak and inconsistent prices made it a bad proposition as a farm.

Smatt's solution was to later expand the small tour component of the business. This has now become its mainstay.

During this period he also bought several acres of land that stretch from Reynolds Jamaica Mines to the cruise ship pier in Ocho Rios. It has about 3,000 feet of frontage.
The 1980s also heralded the rapid expansion of cruise ship tourism in Jamaica, and with this development, Smatt's water sports business.

Smatt said that attractions like his helped to make Jamaica an important destination for cruise lines.

"We played a major role in encouraging cruise lines to come to Jamaica," he noted. "There are two main reasons for cruise ships going into a port: if it falls conveniently in a route; and the attractions available in that port for the passengers. At one point we were providing 90 per cent of the attractions."
In the early 1980s Smatt attempted to secure a foothold in the hotel end of the tourism business when he made an offer to the government, through the National Hotels & Properties for the Arawak Hotel. The offer was rejected.

He had to wait almost two decades for another major opportunity - this time, Shaw Park in 2002.

"The hotel was closed and was up for sale," he said. "We successfully negotiated the purchase and undertook a total refurbishment from the rooms to the kitchen. It took about one year to refurbish."

Smatt declined to say how much he paid for Shaw Park but said he has spent so far US$3 million on its upgrade.
It seems that the acquisition has only whetted his appetite for hotels.

Last year, he was one of the bidders for the Sans Souci Hotel which was put up for sale by the Carreras Group. The hotel was bought by the House of Issa.

In 2004 this tireless businessman began to sketch plans for major developments on some of the land he owns.
For example, he has already completed the development plans for the ocean front property between Reynolds and Island Village.

"We are creating a 55,000 square-foot roadside facility where people can walk off the road and walk into a shop or restaurant," he explains. "There are three levels - shops at second level, and the third level bar and restaurant and entertainment facilities."

Smatt describes this development as "an in-house project, that will have a small hotel of 20 rooms and offices". It will require investment of around US$10 million.
He is also putting the finishing touches to the design for a shopping and convention centre at Shaw Park Gardens.

"This development will involve condos on the golf course and villas, which will be done on a phase basis," he explains.
That's not all. He also plans a local development on three acres of land he owns in St Ann's Bay, but is awaiting the acquisition of adjoining lands so as to be able to put up a meaningful development.

"I am waiting to acquire land next door so as to be able to do a fair size development," he said.
Smatt has very high praise for his staff, at all his properties. He says they are his biggest assets.

"We have excellent staff,' he tells the Business Observer. "They are our biggest asset. We treat them with a lot of respect."

He has two sons, Montgomery Smatt and Ashley Smatt. Both are living overseas.

[CeaBee]

Re: Ryland Campbell wins Observer Business Leader Awar

Thanks Kgn 20...mi finish read these, where mi can find di profiles fi di rest a di nominees?

[Hopyoneson]

Re: Ryland Campbell wins Observer Business Leader Awar

search jamaica observer business section a right de so mi pull dem from

[CeaBee]

Re: Ryland Campbell wins Observer Business Leader Awar




Terence Jarrett: driven by the desire to avoid poverty
Business Leader Nominee #6
Observer Reporter
Wednesday, March 15, 2006



There is a refreshing unpretentiousness to Terence Jarrett's entrepreneurism.

Twenty-six years ago, when this chartered accountant bought the 12-unit Altamont apartment, he had a single visceral motivation: to reverse the generational poverty that had dogged his parents, and which had caused his unsettling early childhood.

Years after the transformation of the Altamont into a viable, mid-sized city hotel, Jarrett is still driven by this primordial fear.

"I wanted to escape poverty as a youth," declares the 67 year-old executive chairman and principal shareholder of the Altamont Court Hotel. "I am still motivated by the desire to escape poverty!"

Poor, he is not.

Yet, this irrepressible businessman continues to invest millions of dollars to expand and upgrade his hotel.
Altamont Court, located on Altamont Terrace in New Kingston, is a cosy 58-room property that boasts a level of service and amenities that have kept its rooms 85 per cent occupied year-round, and its 58 members of staff busy.
Jarrett says it has been a continuous process of investing, expanding and remodelling, to take Altamont to where it is today.

The last of the major expansion was in 1997 when a bank loan of US$1.8 million allowed the owners to add 18 rooms to the 37 that existed.

That debt will be fully paid off in May this year.
But last year, Jarrett deepened his involvement in the tourism business with the acquisition of the 27-room Belvedere Hotel along Montego Bay's famous hip strip.

The Belvedere owners had placed the property on the market, and were asking US$2 million, But Jarrett snatched it for US$675,000 and is now spending another US$1 million to remake and expand it.

"It represents total investment of $100 million," he says.
The 15,000 square-foot hotel, to be called Altamont West, will have 31 rooms and four shops when it opens for business towards the end of May.

While Jarrett is the founder and main force behind the business, in the past 15 years, he has pulled his four sons into the business - his wife Ena much earlier - to create a genuine family enterprise.

The only sibling outside the business is their daughter Nicola, who married and is living abroad.

Jarrett's wife, Ena was the first to join him in the enterprise - as general manager, she having resigned her job as a secretary at the University of the West Indies in the early 1980s. She remains in that position.

The four sons together make up the management core:

. Donahue is in charge of operations and marketing. He is a certified hospitality department trainer and a retired US Air Force sergeant.

He is the third vice president of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association and the recently re-elected chairman of the Small Hotels of the JHTA. He is also the chairman of the product committee and works closely with the state-run Tourism Product Development Company.

. Chris doubles as food and beverage manager, and project and development manager. He holds an MBA, and is a certified electromechanical engineer and a certified food service manager.

. Richard is employee benefits and computer systems manager. He holds a diploma in business administration with a major in accounts from UTECH, a diploma from IMP in computer programming, and a certificate from the Institute of Computer Technology as PC technician.

. Terence Jnr is in charge of banking relationships, and the day-to-day management of the hotel's accounts. He is a graduate of Miami Dade Community College. As the administrative assistant to the CEO, he has specific responsibilities for ensuring that the company operates within its approved banking facilities. He prepares payroll, and handles the day to day banking requirements of the hotel.

The Jarretts represent a model family in business - where authority is decentralised, ideas openly discussed, critically evaluated, and then implemented.

For example, as the chairman points out, it was Donahue's idea for the family to invest in the Montego Bay property.
According to Donahue, once open, Altamont West will create for visitors "a differentiated experience capitalising on personal service".

The property, he says, will have "a modern art deco theme to include background music piped throughout the hotel via satellite radio".

"We plan to be more than a great boutique hotel," says Donahue. "We plan to create an environment of pampered luxury that surpasses the standard for Montego Bay in general and the "Hip Strip" in particular."

"We have come a far way," says Terence Jarrett. "it has been years of hard work and sleepless nights."

Indeed, for Terence Jarrett is the second child of Clarence Jarrett, a detective corporal police, and Louise Jarrett, nee Aitkinson, a dressmaker who had to struggle to make ends meet.

There were six brothers and a sister.
At age five, Jarrett was uprooted when his father and mother separated - his father taking him and two other brothers from their house in Kingston to Ulser Spring in Trelawny where he was posted by the Jamaica Constabulary Force.

The fourth sibling was then just months old and so remained with his mother.

Jarrett recalls moving from one rented house to another 11 times within a few years, before his father was eventually in a position to buy a house.

Nevertheless, as the son of a policeman, "country life was good", he recalls.

"The police got treated different," notes Jarrett. "When things were scarce we were provided for - special cuts of beef, and yams from the farmers and so on."

For Jarrett, life in the country was filled with the normal youthful activities like bird shooting, the freedom to roam about without fear, rabbit rearing and activities associated with the 4-H Club.

He attended the Ulser Spring Elementary School until 12 years old when his father was re-transferred to Kingston.
Back in Kingston, Jarrett enrolled at the Buxton High School a private institution that was located on Victoria Avenue. The land on which the now defunct school once stood, is occupied by the St Michaels church.

After sitting the senior Cambridge exam in December 1954, Jarrett found himself a job.
"In those days you had to get out and work as you left school," he says.

His first job as a clerk with the Commissioner of Income Tax on Tower Street in Kingston lasted eight weeks.

Here, he helped to file and locate documents for Jamaican's seeking to emigrate to the UK - in search of a better life.
"Almost everybody who came for a permit was a dressmaker and hairdresser so they had no income to declare," he tells the Business Observer.

He recalls the assistant commissioner, Kitty Sharp, "a white woman" having a major impact on his career choice.

"When I was leaving, she (Kitty Sharp) asked me what my plans were," said Jarrett. "I said to further my education, and she advised me that 'the commercial world can do with bright youngsters like you'."

Inspired, Jarrett shared the perspective with his father who then registered him with a commercial school called Commercial Academy.

The institute, located on South Camp Road and run by Lester Shield, was the starting point for what eventually became an illustrious career in accounting.

Jarrett, now 17, worked as a costing clerk at the Government Printing Office on Duke Street in Kingston while he attended school part-time.

During his two-and-a-half years at the institute he sat a wide range of accounting certification courses: the Institute of Bookkeepers, the Royal Society of Arts, Pitmans, London Chamber of Commerce, among them.

His job at the printery earned him £5 per week "after a re-grading exercise". But with his ambition of owning his own home, Jarrett at age 18, was able to pay down on two lots of land at Lauriston in Spanish Town that were being sold £60 per lot.

"Because of the way we grew up, I was driven by the fear of poverty. Even now I am driven by it," he explains. "What drove me is the fact that in the six years until my father bought his place, we moved 11 times in Kingston."

By the end of that programme in 1957 at the age of 19, Jarrett landed a job at Soap and Edible Products Ltd - later called Seprod - as a costing and payroll clerk and cashier.
While at Seprod, he continued to pursue accounting courses - now the London School of Accountancy correspondence course with a view to writing the Association of International Accountants (AIA).

Jarrett was living on Eastwood Park Road.
Shortly after he got married - in 1961 - he and his wife moved to Lexingson Avenue in Vineyard Town.
"I took back the money that I had paid down for the land to help buy furniture," he said.

For the first seven years of marriage, his wife did not work - opting instead to stay home to look after the children.
After three years at Seprod, he joined JHG Mapp Successors, a packaging and distributor company that had its headquarters on Barry Street in Kingston. Among its products were Ovaltine and the Bristol Myers brands.

Here, at 22 years old, Jarrett was assistant accountant. He became chief accountant and company secretary by the time he left the firm nine years after, in December 1970.

While at Mapp Successors, Jarrett worked on Saturdays at Track Price Plus, a betting company that was owned by the young, enterprising businessman Lucien Chen.

"I was getting £4 for working on Saturdays which I saved," he said. "At Mapp, I earned between about £7 and £8 per week."

It was in fact the money saved from the work at Track Price Plus that he used to buy his first house in Hughenden, St Andrew.

"I decided that the children were not going to grow up in rented house because there were too many restrictions," he said. "By this time the children are going to Our Lady of the Angels on Molynes Road."

In pursuing his accounting career, he had also registered at CAST in 1967 to pursue the Association of Chartered Certified Accountant (ACCA).

So by 1970 when Jarrett joined the auditing firm, Pricewaterhouse, he was well on his way to attaining the chartered accountancy - which he achieved in 1973.

A few years later, he sold his Hughenden house and bought another at Cassadene in Cassia Park.

The family remained there until 1977 when Jarrett bought the house in which he now lives in Cherry Gardens. He paid $57,000 for the property.

At Pricewaterhouse, Jarrett was responsible for auditing Jamaica Broilers accounts. Here, he met the finance director Phillip Levy who invited him to join the staff as chief accountant.

It was his new employer that provided him with the bridge finance to acquire the Cherry Gardens home.

Later, when Levy emigrated from Jamaica, Jarrett was made financial controller, and group financial director of Broilers.
Jarrett recalls being among those in Jamaica who, during the political turmoil of the 1970s had considered emigrating.

So, by the end of the 1970s he had saved US$40,000, which he had intended to use to give his family a start abroad, in the event that the Manley regime was returned to power.
However, with the defeat of the socialist regime in the 1980 elections, he remained in Jamaica.

"In the early 1980s Jamaica was recovering from the depression," says Jarrett. "Broilers was a good job and my wife was working at the University of the West Indies as a secretary. I am a thrifty person by nature so by then I had saved J$110,000."

As part of what he calls, "the poverty escaping strategy", Jarrett began to angle himself as a potential investor under the new political regime that promised to be more friendly to capital than was the case with the Manley administration.

He saw an opportunity in a 12-bedroom apartment complex in New Kingston that was going for $520,000. It was called Altamont apartment.

"I was looking for investment," he explains. "The recovery was coming and I wanted to get involved quickly as part of the poverty avoidance motivation."

The price, he reckoned, was "good" because it compared favourably with the $750,000 that Durmot Blake was asking for Clievenden Court.

Jarrett immediately began to formulate a business plan for the Altamont apartment.

"At the time it was 12 apartments on half-an-acre of land," he noted. "The idea was to have short-term rental with cooking facilities."

Jarret secured bank funding, and his wife Ena resigned her job as secretary at the university to manage the property.
He however, remained at Jamaica Broilers, and from 1982 to 1988 "plowed all my available savings into the Altamont operation".

The business, he said, did well, to the extent that by 1986 he was able to make another capital investment in it - splitting off the one-bedroom apartments that were downstairs, into studios, thus creating an 18-room complex. Altamont now had 12 studios and six one-bedroom units.

By the following year, the Jarretts were able to pay $500,000 for a quarter acre adjoining land, for expansion. The land was paid for by cash generated by the business, he says.

In the mid-1980s, Jarrett decided to diversify his business interest - starting a party hireage company called Jartena Hireage. It was located 5 Braemar Avenue in Kingston - a property he had bought a few years earlier.

"It was a popular hireage service," he says. "It was next to Kingston Hirage in terms of size."

During the same period, this businessman was also part of the chartered auditing firm, Pierce Jarrett and Company.
"Business turned me on more than accounting," says Jarrett. "Accounting was a means to an end."

But in 1988, Jarrett separated from Seprod over a complaint from the company that his other businesses were creating a conflict of interest.

This separation made him more determined to make the hotel business a success.

"By 1992 the hotel business was showing clear signs of viability and on that basis we were able to do a projection that formed the basis of a loan proposal to the bank," he noted. "We built 19 new rooms."

The $12-million investment, most of which was borrowed, increased Altamont's room count to 37.

This stage at which Altamont began to take shape as a serious player in Kingston's small hotel sector, also coincided with the return of his children from abroad. Donahue was the first to join the business - in 1991, followed by Christopher in 1992.

"Business was good, we were running high occupancy, between 85 and 95 per cent," says Jarrett. "That forced us to look at expansion."

The expansion that was undertaken in 1996 was the boldest and most ambitious investment in the property to date. The Jarretts borrowed US$1.8 million to create 18 more rooms, thus increasing the size of the hotel from 37 to 55 rooms.

They were also other major changes to the property including the lifting of the roof of the original buildings, splitting of the middle rooms, and connecting both buildings. A new kitchen, new meeting rooms, new dining room were added, as well as a roof terrace.

That same year, Jarrett sold the party hiring business which he said had become too time consuming.

The investment and single focus in the hotel paid off.
"The debt that we took in 1997 will all be paid off by May 2006," beams Jarrett.

In 2004 a next-door building that the Jarretts had bought from 1992 for future expansion was knocked down to create a car park and three additional rooms.

The Altamont now boasts among its facilities, three conference rooms with combined size of 5,000 square feet, a swimming pool, and access to tennis and squash courts.

[CeaBee]

Re: Ryland Campbell wins Observer Business Leader Awar



From riding a donkey to driving a Bimmer


On Wednesday, Eugennie Minto will be in Madrid, Spain receiving the Spanish Publishing House/Trade Leaders Club Golden Trophy - an award for excellence in hospitality.
Minto, owner of Hotel Glorianna in Montego Bay, is justifiably proud as it has been a long road from her days of riding a donkey to sell her wares in the market to owning a hotel.

I have been blessed," said Minto, who has written an autobiography called 'From Gloria to Glorianna.' "God has been lavish in his goodwill towards me.

I've been gifted with seven children - five with my husband - who are now all grown up and doing well, and the magnificient outpouring of support from my mother, Miss Mimi, who assisted me with them all through the years. So many, many memories. Good and bad - but so much to be thankful for."

In her book, Minto describes her growth from a naive teenaged country girl from remote Coopershop District, St James, to selling oranges as a higgler in Montego Bay, then having children and struggling to cope as a battered spouse. There were many heartaches as she was swindled several times in her bid to succeed in different business endeavours.

Ten years ago, however she got a loan to start the 75-room hotel and the rest is history. "I built it from scratch!" she said. "But, I got a lot of help. Part of the land was airport (Sangster International) swamp. So many people dissauded me. So many people encouraged me.

I simply followed my instinct, went ahead - and put my all into trying to operate a good small hotel from the travelling people of the world, and for my own Jamaicans."