The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

“Outraged” former City Markets employees yesterday vowed to hold “a massive demonstration” on Bay Street in protest at attempts to transfer the defunct supermarket chain’s pension plan trust to a new company.

Whanslaw Turnquest, the former City Markets inventory control officer, who has assumed the role of chief spokesperson for the former staff, accused the Bahamas Supermarket Retirement Trust’s trustees of employing “trickery tactics” in trying to get ex-employees to agree to the asset transfer.

He told Tribune Business that the consent of former staff had been sought to transfer their pension assets from the existing trust to a new limited liability company, the Bahamas Supermarkets Retirement Plan Ltd.

In exchange, Mr Turnquest said the employees were being given share certificates in the new company, which were said to be equivalent in value to their vested pension sum.

Admitting that he had initially told former City Markets staff to sign-up to this proposal, Mr Turnquest told Tribune Business he had been misled.

He explained that he believed the share certificates for the Bahamas Supermarkets Retirement Plan would be “redeemable or cashable” at the National Insurance Board (NIB) or a commercial bank, but then realised they represented equity in a company whose market value could not be easily determined.

Now reversing course and urging former staff not to sign up, Mr Turnquest also accused the Bahamas Supermarket Retirement Trust of trying to reduce the pension sums owed by “up to $2,000”.

He added that some 200 former City Markets staff were impacted by the situation, and said the pension fund still collectively owed them $5.6 million.

Other sources confirmed Monday’s move by the Bahamas Supermarket Retirement Trust, one former City Markets manager telling Tribune Business that his telephone had been “ringing off the hook” since Monday afternoon with complaints from ex-workers.

The same source said that any move to transfer the pension assets from the existing trust to a company like the Bahamas Supermarkets Retirement Plan Ltd “would essentially give the participants a weaker position than if they were beneficiaries of a trust”.

Mark Finlayson, who together with Christine Turnquest-Knowles and Connie Rolle, acts as the pension plan’s three trustees, could not be reached for comment despite messages left for him by phone and e-mail.

Tribune Business was given a phone number for the location where former City Markets employees were being asked to sign, and told to call a ‘Mrs Rolle’, who was described as a human resources officer.

When this newspaper called that number, a woman answered: “BSL Retirement”. BSL stands for Bahamas Supermarkets, City Markets’ operating parent. When Tribune Business asked for Mrs Rolle, the woman quickly said she was not available, and would have to take a message. The call was not returned.

Yesterday’s developments are the latest stage in the protracted saga involving the City Markets’ pension plan, and the efforts of staff/beneficiaries to obtain what is due to them, and the trustees’ efforts to do just that.

Mr Turnquest told Tribune Business that the proposed transfer also involved the former City Markets’ headquarters building on East-West Highway, which was the plan’s key asset.

It has been appraised at values ranging from $5 million to $9.9 million, and its successful sale for a sum between those figures - turning it from an illiquid top liquid holding - remains the key objective for both trustees and beneficiaries.

Suggesting that the Government, in the shape of the National Insurance Board (NIB), was back at the negotiating table in its ‘on again, off again’ effort to acquire the property, Mr Turnquest said of the proposed asset transfer: “All the employees are outraged. We are planning a massive demonstration downtown.

“What they want to do is incorporate a new company, the Bahamas Supermarkets Retirement Plan Ltd, and take the assets away from the Retirement Trust Fund, which is protected under the Trust Act of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas.

“All the employees are very upset. They also reduced the amount earned by employees by up to $2,000. It is not right. I am advising the employees not to sign off on that.”

Mr Turnquest said the trustees were arguing that prior to 2009, beneficiaries’ holdings in the pension plan had been overvalued, and a downward adjustment was now necessary.

He alleged that part of the asset transfer also involved former employees agreeing to cease legal action against the employees and trustees. One of the attorneys who has been representing former City Markets staff said that while he had heard of this, he had yet to see the document they were required to sign.

Mr Turnquest, meanwhile, added: “You cannot divest pensions from a trust fund into a limited liability company.

“It’s trickery tactics to lock them into an agreement with a limited liability company and disenfranchise them from the protection of the Trust Act.”

Mr Turnquest suggested the move would also have released the trustees from some of their fiduciary duties to the pension plan under the trust deed.

He further said: “What they’re trying to do is issue share certificates in the company valued up to what they claim is your vested interest in the pension plan.

“What they said originally was that those certificates, we were under the premise they would be redeemable at NIB or a financial institution.”