By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas’ Coca-Cola bottler says no operational changes will result from the takeover battle engulfing its 30 per cent Barbadian shareholder, as it “sits on the sidelines” awaiting the outcome.

Walter Wells, Caribbean Bottling Company’s president and chief executive, told Tribune Business it was “business as usual” despite the bidding war for Banks Holdings Ltd.

The Barbadian brewing giant, which is being fought over by Anheuser-Busch’s Brazilian subsidiary and the Trinidadian conglomerate, Ansa McAl, is a substantial - though not controlling - investor in the Bahamian company.

“It doesn’t really affect us at all,” Mr Wells told Tribune Business of the bidding war impacting his 30 per cent equity investor. “It doesn’t impact us one way or the other.

“They are a minority shareholder not involved in the running or management of our company. There’s no significant influence in that regard.

“it’s really an issue that we are kind of sitting on the sidelines, and wondering how it’s going to play out. There’s a bidding war going on, which is still evolving, and we’re not really sure what’s going to happen.”

Banks was part of the consortium formed by Mr Wells to purchase the Coca-Cola bottler from then-owners, Judy Munroe and Carleton Williams, several years ago.

The Barbadian firm’s involvement was encouraged by Coca-Cola itself, which wanted the inclusion of drinks manufacturing expertise among the Bahamian franchise’s new owners.

According to Caribbean Bottling’s website, a pair of senior Banks executives, Richard Cozier and Dan Stoute, hold two of the company’s six director seats. That gives Banks, and a potential new owner, one-third of the Board - a significant, but not a controlling or majority, position.

Mr Wells said he was eager to know who might soon control a 30 per cent equity stake in his company, but conceded he would have to wait “until the dust settles” in Barbados.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he told Tribune Business, when asked about the implications for a change of ownership at Banks. “But the reality is it’s business as usual for us.

“At the end of the day, you do want to know who will have a stake in your company. It may be another player in terms of who controls Banks, and we’ll see where that leads us. It’s not going to change how we operate at our end.”

It remains to be seen whether Banks’s intentions and plans towards its Caribbean Bottling stake will alter should it come under new control.

However, corporate ownership changes often see strategic rethinks, and sometimes lead to the divestment of activities perceived as non-core - as the 30 per cent Bahamian equity interest might be.

Anheuser-Busch’s Brazilian subsidiary acquired a 41 per cent stake in Banks in September, and subsequently made an offer to acquire the whole company. It is fighting against Ansa McAl, which itself owns 13 per cent of the Barbadian brewer.

The two sides are rowing over a so-called ‘poison pill’ clause, inherited by Anheuser-Busch via a different acquisition, which requires any rival for Banks to bid $10 per share for the company.

The global brewing giant has also made other major moves in the Bahamas, switching distribution of Budweiser and its other brands from Commonwealth Brewery to the Bahamian Brewery and Beverage Company, ending a four-decade relationship with the former.

Mr Wells, meanwhile, told Tribune Business that trading for Caribbean Bottling had been “soft” since Hurricane Joaquin hit the central and southern Bahamas in early October.

“The same thing we’re seeing, other companies are seeing,” he told Tribune Business. “I don’t think it’s only us.”

Apart from shrinking sales on the hardest-hit islands, Mr Wells said consumer spending on New Providence had also been affected by the much-needed diversion of money towards recovery and restoration efforts.

“Almost to the day, October 1, that the storm started impacting, we saw business become a little soft compared to last year,” Mr Wells reiterated.

He added that Value-Added Tax (VAT) had ‘”worked well” from the perspective of Caribbean Bottling’s ability to collect and administer it on the Government’s behalf.

“It seems to me that the dust has settled,” Mr Wells told Tribune Business. “It works very smoothly in our business.

“We had a pretty sophisticated infrastructure in place from a reporting standpoint to start with, and it was just a matter of adding VAT on top. It’s worked well for us.”

While VAT had an initial effect on consumer spending, as many had anticipated, Mr Wells said most Bahamians seemed “to have adjusted to the new norm”.

“VAT is working well for us in terms of how it’s administered by us, and for me, from a customer standpoint the impact has not been significant,” he reiterated.