LEE CHIN
MICHAEL LEE Chin deepened his grip on the electronic media this week with the acquisition of the Jamaican cable TV provider, Sauce Communications Network, by Columbus Communications, the parent company of Flow Communications, the broadband network provider in which the Jamaican/Canadian billionaire is a 50 per cent stakeholder.
The Government on Monday gave regulatory approval for acquisition of Sauce as well as that of CVM Group, the media portion of Neville Blythe's UGI Group, which Lee Chin acquired recently as part of a bailout of Blythe's United General Insurance Company. Among the companies in the CVM portfolio are the free-to-air television station, CVM TV, an independent programme provider, CVM Plus, HOT 102 radio station and the weekly newspapers, X-News and Teen Herald.
T&T CABLE SERVICES
Lee Chin, whose National Commercial Bank holds 10 per cent of the Jamaican radio and television outfit, RJR Group, had previously through the Barbados-based subsidiary of his Canadian firm, AIC, acquired cable services in Trinidad and Tobago and the Bahamas.
This new acquisition, the sale price of which could not be immediately ascertained, not only enhances Lee Chin's growing stature as a media mogul, but immediately gives Flow a company with a licence to operate a cable service in 22 zones in Kingston, including the downtown areas of the capital, east Kingston, Cherry Gardens, Harbour View and August Town. The Broadcasting Commission recently renewed Sauce's licence for ten years.
Flow, which recently com-pleted the laying of fibre optic cable between Jamaica and Dominican Republic on its ultimate route to Florida, has been busy wiring the capital ahead of the roll out of broadband Internet and other services in several communities.
It is expected that Flow will use the technology to provide enhanced cable services not only in Jamaica and that Lee Chin will attempt to use his stake in the firm and its Caribbean media properties to create a seamless regional service, taking advantage of opportunities offered by the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) among most of the 15-member states of the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM).
Sauce's CEO and director, Philbert McCarty, was unavailable for comment yesterday, but not everyone is applauding Lee Chin's latest acquisition. In a prominent advertisement in The Sunday Gleaner, a group of seven cable service operators, apparently pointing to Flow, made clear that "despite persistent rumours to the contrary, we ... have not sold our companies".
An industry source with whom Wednesday Business spoke said that cable operators had banded together because they resented what they perceived to be Lee Chin's predatory tactics.
"The view is that one person can't just come in and buy up everything just like that," said the source. "These guys built their business from scratch and did not like the fact that he wanted to buy them out outright rather than be a partner."
Lee Chin, reportedly, had approached a number of cable operators to buy their operations offers which they refused.
