The Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported last week that its controversial and enigmatic Chairman Leroy Parris has hinted at retirement at year end. The brief statement posted on the CBC website states:

Reports reaching the CBC are that the Chairman of CLICO Holdings will be retiring from that organisation at year end. While we have not yet been able to reach Mr Parris for comment  … CBC understands that he has made his intentions known at a board meeting last Monday. He has spent 30 years with CLICO Holdings moving its asset base from  two million dollars to one point four billion dollars, and he has also been responsible for the development for all the subsidiaries of CLICO holdings.

The above does not surprise BU given the other role which Parris currently plays as Executive Chairman of CLICO Holdings Barbados Ltd. The financial woes of the Trinidad based pan-Caribbean company CL Financial continues to be a concern for many of the countries in which it operates including Barbados. Based on the most recent status report on the matter as it pertains to Barbados, an Oversight Committee is currently considering bids to purchase some of the assets of CLICO Holdings Barbados Ltd. Chairman Parris in the circumstances has no choice but to remove himself from the position before he is pushed.

In the last 20 years Leroy Parris has been a household name in Barbados, we can attribute multiple reasons to why. However when the dust is settled on the CLICO Affair Parris probably will be remembered as a Black man, who with limited academic achievements, rose to the commanding heights of corporate Barbados and became a power broker in the process. Until the tsunami of the global financial meltdown severely impacted CL Financial; Parris would have sailed the good ship CLICO from a 2 million dollar all the way to a 4 billion dollar  asset base company.

Unfortunately the aggressive risk positions taken by the CL Financial management has exposed the conglomerate in the current depressed global financial market, (especially the in US). It is instructive that Mr. Chin who is the Jamaican equivalent of Lawrence Duprey, the Executive Chairman of CL Financial has been having his own problems and has had to dump some of his shares in National Commercial Bank to raise cash.

Barbadians continue to watch the sad tale of how some would so quickly use the unfortunate situation which Parris finds himself to dismantle all he would have achieved against the odds. Like most if not other human beings he would have made mistakes along the way. BU is left to wonder about the fixation which many Black Barbadians have at jabbing Leroy Parris every opportunity they get.

We wish the gentleman all the best in his retirement if it materialises as reported. While many continue to focus on the negatives we owe it to the man to highlight the little Black boy who made it all the way to the big yard. We hope others who currently find themselves in unfortunate positions would be inspired that nothing is impossible to achieve.