By Al Edwards, Business Co-ordinatorTHE COUNTRY'S leading lottery company, Supreme Ventures has taken the decision to restructure both the company and its operations, three months after acquiring majority shares in the Jamaica Lottery Company (JLC). This will come at a cost of approximately $20 million.
Speaking at a press briefing held at its corporate headquarters, at the Life of Jamaica Building, New Kingston, Supreme Ventures' President and chief executive officer, Brian George said that this will make staff reductions a necessity.
OPTIMUM BUSINESS MODEL
"On acquiring a majority stake in the JLC we decided to look for optimum business model which would allow us to take this company forward after. We did some evaluation and after much consideration to the best practices of both companies that would allow the entity to achieve the operating efficiencies in distribution products and services that we offer to the marketplace."
Supreme Ventures has undergone a review of both its own and the JLC's agent network and has now cancelled all agents' contracts with the intent of re-contracting them to sell a wider roster of games. Agents are now being retrained and should be selling both companies' games from March 29th when the games will all be run from a single platform. Both Supreme Ventures and JLC have a combined agent force of 1200. This will now be reduced to 1000.
Supreme Ventures now has a new integrated management team. Suzzette Tomlinson has been appointed business development manager with Mrs. Sonia Davidson coming in as corporate PR & communications manager. Mr. Roger Williams is now the vice-president, for the Retail Services Division. The combined companies had a staff of 116 employees. As a result of the reorganisation that will be reduced to 66 which means some 50 employees will have to go.
Of these job cuts Brian George said: "We had a staff meeting on Sunday at the Hilton where we informed the staff of this. We didn't want them to hear of it in the press first. We were very up front with them on what this meant and sought to explain the implications of this decision. The staff that have been asked to stay will be transferred to Supreme Ventures' payroll without any loss of service.
For those who unfortunately have been asked to leave, we have come up with a superior severance package. What we are paying is over the statutory limit. We have provided extended health care benefits. For the employees that have been severed, they will continue to be part of the company's health care plan for three months afterwards. They will also be entitled to an education fund benefit package of $40,000.00.
Supreme Ventures will be adopting a more distributive model of retail and is projecting revenues of $16 billion this year on an annualised basis. It will be raising the price of a Lotto ticket from $20 to $30. There is now a higher starting Jackpot moving from $4 million to $7 million. When Supreme Ventures first entered the local lottery market, total sales were $1.8 billion. Today lottery sales are $13 billion.
