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Dream shattered by FINSAC
'I did not plan to fail ...' - Dream shattered by FINSAC
Published: Sunday | May 17, 2009
Ian Allen/Staff [COLOR=orange! important][COLOR=orange! important]Photographer[/COLOR][/COLOR]
Leslie Lewis is distraught after losing all his assets.
Ahead of the commission of inquiry into the 1990s financial sector collapse, which commences on July 1, The Sunday Gleaner continues to look at the struggles of many investors who lost everything.
Lovelette Brooks, News Editor
THE SPRAWLING house sitting on the Manchester hilltop is weathered by age. Here and there, the discoloured white paint peels. The picture is a snapshot of partial neglect.
It's a sad image that seems to mirror the inner turmoil Leslie Lewis now feels. He bought this property and moved in with his family in 1963. The young engineer had the grit to become a successful businessman, and he did.
However, he lost everything during the mid-90s financial meltdown in Jamaica when his transformer company, the only one in Jamaica, was seized by the Financial Sector Adjustment Company (FINSAC) to cover millions of dollars he owed in debt.
Today, Leslie Lewis is a broken man.
"Sometimes I sit and sob when I think of how I have let my family down," he utters warily.
We are sitting on his patio, and as the whispering winds bring the temperature down, Lewis relates his story of misfortune and tragedy. This includes the loss of his eldest son and wife shortly after he was 'brought down' by FINSAC.
"My son, Leslie, took the take-over of the business very hard. It was a family business and my wife and all my children were involved. One was the chief engineer, one procured the contracts and my wife did the accounts and other paperwork.
"Leslie was ill and when he heard of the collapse, he died two weeks later. My wife, too, was totally devastated, and she unfortunately passed on not too long after," Lewis relates sadly.
An electrical engineer, Lewis, after leaving the British Institute of Engineering Technology in the late 1950s, landed a job at Alcan Bauxite and Alumina Company. For a little over a decade he worked there, quite happily until he came up with a novel and "brilliant manufacturing idea" that would transform his life.
Lewis started manufacturing power transformers. At that time these were only available from the Jamaica Public Service Company Limited (JPS). They were in short supply and many places could not get them, says Lewis.
"What prompted me was a friend who had an antique shop and needed power. He had to pay JPS £40,000 to bring electricity to him. So I said, that's a good business venture to go into."
Electrical transformers are used to "transform" voltage from one level to another, usually from a higher voltage to a lower voltage.
Lewis discussed the idea with family members who would be integral to the business, then went in search of the technology.
Tedious and challenging
That search took him to Pennsylvania and Texas in the United States of America. He recounts the tedious and challenging process of learning to build transformers. At the end, he was adept at designing, manufacturing, testing and distributing transformers.
Back home, he set up Jamaica Transformer Limited in 1969 - an 85,000 square foot factory in Mandeville. He had contracts valuing close to $200 million. All went well and he was "making good money".
Lewis went into serious debt when he secured a $24 million loan to expand the factory.
"At that time, I was employing about 85 persons. But one of my sons encouraged me to give some more support to the youths and expand a training programme I had with Government. I did not want to borrow any money, but I gave in. The loan actually helped me to expand my storage capacity, so I could expand output.
"Jamaica Transformer Limited was a healthy company with contracts in the Caribbean, Latin America and the US. We had no difficulty servicing the loan," Lewis says.
He ran into problems when Workers Bank, which held his loan portfolio, collapsed in 1997.
"I got a call on my two-way radio that Workers Bank was closed. I was frightened out of my wits. I was calculating that my debt then was about $11.9 million, so it would not be too difficult to clear off. Little did I know ...", Lewis remembers, now teary-eyed.
After making several attempts to contact the bank, Lewis says he was referred to FINSAC. He made several trips into Kingston to see then finance minister Dr Omar Davies and to negotiate with FINSAC. He never got a hearing and was later informed that his loan portfolio had climbed to $65 million.
"That shook me. I was out of breath and wondered if they were serious. But we struggled and struggled, still trying to pay off. The thing is, when you pay $50 million, another $50 million becomes due.
"Then we were ordered to stop paying. FINSAC said they would inform me when to start paying again," says the engineer who confides that he is now penniless.
He says he lost hope when they told him that even after closing the portfolio he would be assessed again to see how much more he had accumulated in fees.
"This destroyed me. I was totally depressed. We sold off all the contracts and scaled right down. One morning, over breakfast, a call came from the factory informing me that representatives from the bank and police were taking over the factory.
"All 45 workers were ordered out of the factory at gun point and I was barred from even going on the property. It was June 2006. They shut the place down and stripped it. I stood a far and watched and all I could say was 'Good Lord'!".
Confusion
Lewis says at the time of the take-over, he had contracts valued at more than $118 million. The building without equipment was valued at $210 million and the equipment $175 million.
"That was it. The takeover created hell in the family. We were closely knit, and this destroyed that bond. We were all in confusion. I could not even buy gas for the car, they took everything," Lewis says, inviting us into a sparsely furnished living room that holds memories of a better life.
"That is my oldest boy sitting next to my wife in the middle. He died. The other boy on her left is in the US, he's not too well, and that's my daughter, who will be here next week, and sitting on my wife's lap is my last son. Nothing is ever the same," he says as he gestures to the black-and-white family portrait.
The bitter 87-year-old who celebrated his birthday on Thursday, March 15, when we visited, wished he was not born in Jamaica where his dream died under FINSAC.
lovelette.brooks@gleanerjm.com
Published: Sunday | May 17, 2009
Ian Allen/Staff [COLOR=orange! important][COLOR=orange! important]Photographer[/COLOR][/COLOR]
Leslie Lewis is distraught after losing all his assets.
Ahead of the commission of inquiry into the 1990s financial sector collapse, which commences on July 1, The Sunday Gleaner continues to look at the struggles of many investors who lost everything.
Lovelette Brooks, News Editor
THE SPRAWLING house sitting on the Manchester hilltop is weathered by age. Here and there, the discoloured white paint peels. The picture is a snapshot of partial neglect.
It's a sad image that seems to mirror the inner turmoil Leslie Lewis now feels. He bought this property and moved in with his family in 1963. The young engineer had the grit to become a successful businessman, and he did.
However, he lost everything during the mid-90s financial meltdown in Jamaica when his transformer company, the only one in Jamaica, was seized by the Financial Sector Adjustment Company (FINSAC) to cover millions of dollars he owed in debt.
Today, Leslie Lewis is a broken man.
"Sometimes I sit and sob when I think of how I have let my family down," he utters warily.
We are sitting on his patio, and as the whispering winds bring the temperature down, Lewis relates his story of misfortune and tragedy. This includes the loss of his eldest son and wife shortly after he was 'brought down' by FINSAC.
"My son, Leslie, took the take-over of the business very hard. It was a family business and my wife and all my children were involved. One was the chief engineer, one procured the contracts and my wife did the accounts and other paperwork.
"Leslie was ill and when he heard of the collapse, he died two weeks later. My wife, too, was totally devastated, and she unfortunately passed on not too long after," Lewis relates sadly.
An electrical engineer, Lewis, after leaving the British Institute of Engineering Technology in the late 1950s, landed a job at Alcan Bauxite and Alumina Company. For a little over a decade he worked there, quite happily until he came up with a novel and "brilliant manufacturing idea" that would transform his life.
Lewis started manufacturing power transformers. At that time these were only available from the Jamaica Public Service Company Limited (JPS). They were in short supply and many places could not get them, says Lewis.
"What prompted me was a friend who had an antique shop and needed power. He had to pay JPS £40,000 to bring electricity to him. So I said, that's a good business venture to go into."
Electrical transformers are used to "transform" voltage from one level to another, usually from a higher voltage to a lower voltage.
Lewis discussed the idea with family members who would be integral to the business, then went in search of the technology.
Tedious and challenging
That search took him to Pennsylvania and Texas in the United States of America. He recounts the tedious and challenging process of learning to build transformers. At the end, he was adept at designing, manufacturing, testing and distributing transformers.
Back home, he set up Jamaica Transformer Limited in 1969 - an 85,000 square foot factory in Mandeville. He had contracts valuing close to $200 million. All went well and he was "making good money".
Lewis went into serious debt when he secured a $24 million loan to expand the factory.
"At that time, I was employing about 85 persons. But one of my sons encouraged me to give some more support to the youths and expand a training programme I had with Government. I did not want to borrow any money, but I gave in. The loan actually helped me to expand my storage capacity, so I could expand output.
"Jamaica Transformer Limited was a healthy company with contracts in the Caribbean, Latin America and the US. We had no difficulty servicing the loan," Lewis says.
He ran into problems when Workers Bank, which held his loan portfolio, collapsed in 1997.
"I got a call on my two-way radio that Workers Bank was closed. I was frightened out of my wits. I was calculating that my debt then was about $11.9 million, so it would not be too difficult to clear off. Little did I know ...", Lewis remembers, now teary-eyed.
After making several attempts to contact the bank, Lewis says he was referred to FINSAC. He made several trips into Kingston to see then finance minister Dr Omar Davies and to negotiate with FINSAC. He never got a hearing and was later informed that his loan portfolio had climbed to $65 million.
"That shook me. I was out of breath and wondered if they were serious. But we struggled and struggled, still trying to pay off. The thing is, when you pay $50 million, another $50 million becomes due.
"Then we were ordered to stop paying. FINSAC said they would inform me when to start paying again," says the engineer who confides that he is now penniless.
He says he lost hope when they told him that even after closing the portfolio he would be assessed again to see how much more he had accumulated in fees.
"This destroyed me. I was totally depressed. We sold off all the contracts and scaled right down. One morning, over breakfast, a call came from the factory informing me that representatives from the bank and police were taking over the factory.
"All 45 workers were ordered out of the factory at gun point and I was barred from even going on the property. It was June 2006. They shut the place down and stripped it. I stood a far and watched and all I could say was 'Good Lord'!".
Confusion
Lewis says at the time of the take-over, he had contracts valued at more than $118 million. The building without equipment was valued at $210 million and the equipment $175 million.
"That was it. The takeover created hell in the family. We were closely knit, and this destroyed that bond. We were all in confusion. I could not even buy gas for the car, they took everything," Lewis says, inviting us into a sparsely furnished living room that holds memories of a better life.
"That is my oldest boy sitting next to my wife in the middle. He died. The other boy on her left is in the US, he's not too well, and that's my daughter, who will be here next week, and sitting on my wife's lap is my last son. Nothing is ever the same," he says as he gestures to the black-and-white family portrait.
The bitter 87-year-old who celebrated his birthday on Thursday, March 15, when we visited, wished he was not born in Jamaica where his dream died under FINSAC.
lovelette.brooks@gleanerjm.com
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