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Solar Dynamics placed in receivership

James Husbands - Solar Dynamics

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Last week the Barbados Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) during its Legacy of Leaders Celebration Luncheon at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre recognised five Barbadian business persons – James Husbands, founder of Solar Dynamics, was one of five awardees.

Related link – Mottley eyes 5% growth

He deserves his recognition, he grew Solar Dynamics to be a household name in Barbados although attempts to take the company regional floundered. Surprising to some, there was a report in the media Solar Dynamics was sold to George Connolly in 2023. The first thought that came to mind was, where was the succession plan? However, it was still good to know that transfer of ownership was to a fellow Barbadian. Too many Bajan companies have been acquired by expats in recent years.

However, there was sadness after reading the notification Christopher Sambrano was appointed Receiver of Solar Dynamics by Royal Bank of Canada. Although being placed in receivership does not mean Solar Dynamics will fade from the Barbados landscape, what it means for sure is that it is a company under financial distress and will likely fail.

Notice of appointment of receiver for Solar Dynamics Ltd., stating Christopher Stephen Sambrano as the receiver, detailing the appointment date and responsibilities.

Locally owned companies continue to fail in Barbados and the impact obviously goes beyond the loss of just a business, it deflates our national confidence as a people. Local companies are suppose to be symbols of our cultural identity, representative of our education system. The transfer of ownership to outside players or demise of our best companies admits a failure to be able to sucessfully marshal our human and financial resources.

We have witnessed the demise or sale of Shamrock, N.E. Wilson, Barbados Shipping & Trading, Barbados National Bank and several others that suggest Barbadians cannot sustain our own institutions.

Are we there yet?

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43 responses to “Solar Dynamics placed in receivership”

  1. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    What a sin!

    At a time when solar energy is arguably one the largest potential industrial areas all over the world, this must be a sin.

    An unrepentable sin committed by a succession of generations.

    This country has succeeded in destroying everything that everybody, particularly Blacks, have tried to build in this country.

    To be successful in Barbados you must be a merchant, well imbued with that mercantile mentality to have a chance, if yuh lucky and if the banks didn’t sabotage yuh business.

    This here blog knows well that Barrow once called ‘the corporate undertaker’. He was the agent central to these procedures.

    Black corporate Barbados has been littered with the bodies of any number of Black businessmen. These would include the Great Trevor Clarke, Halton Martin, Fred Hampden, Mohammad Nassar, and many more.

    Recently the exception which was indicative of the rule has told this writer that the wider culture is so degenerative that the willingness to sell everything and run is front of mind.

    What a national tragedy!

  2. Donna Avatar
    Donna

    Yes, it is clear that the wider culture is degenerate.

    What did James Husband’s son do with the opportunity that he had? Did he resolve to be a credit to his father and carry on where he left off?

    Nope! He went in the opposite direction. And that is a tragedy that hurt my black Bajan heart!

  3. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    This writer has spent many a year as consultant in these succession issues as a member of such teams.

    In these we have many, many, many strategies to bypass any negative proclivities of beneficial owners as functions of estate planning.

    Indeed, Barbados tooo has a long history of inheritors turning away from the founders’ intent. Even before the era of James Tudor, N E Wilson and on and on.

    We see these same tendencies all over the world. In this respect there is nothing unique about the Bajan and their familial successors nor the mountains of other problems they continue to have to contend with, maybe being less able.

    Indeed, in some cases these moguls exist in name alone, but even that has value. In other cases, none of the family members are actively envolved in the businesses. And yet we have the Carnegies, the Fords, etc traversing epochs. Therefore, the perceived ‘weaknesses’ of inheritors alone cannot explain such a national tragedy in Barbados.

  4. John A Avatar
    John A

    Truly sorry to hear this about Mr Husbands. He is not only an entrepreneur but a gentleman. Thing is what do you do if the children don’t want the business? Look at how many businesses we have lost to foreigners over the years, the last being Collins Limited I think.

    Well Barrow did predict it years ago when he said we will awake one day and find our island is owned by others.

  5. David Avatar
    David

    A reminder the business was sold to George Connolly. One is left to speculate what occurred between May 2023 and the decision made this year to appoint a receiver.

  6. David Avatar
    David

    Sadly the average Barbadian cares nought about the demise of these Bajan companies and what it forebodes. What they are about is calling Chefette delivery, smoking weed and the next fete or lime.

  7. John A Avatar
    John A

    @ David

    Can you imagine how Mr Husbands must feel seeing what he created come to this? Yes he was paid for it but its watching something you spent a lifetime building end up this way that can’t be easy.

  8. David Avatar
    David

    @John A

    We must live in hope that the receiver can return the company to good financial health.

  9. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    Was Solar Dynamics not sold by Mr Husbands some time ago?

  10. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    Sagicor went differently. But went so it did. And those big-brained backers of that move seemed to have found themselves in a backruptcy of sorts. A bankriptcy which said that the model they reached for could not be sustained in the real world of international finance.

    As a result there was essentially a force sell off. A bankruptcy of ideas. A 200-year old institution gone because they could not accept an active, ownership, policyholdership. Something they denied for 150 years.

    The former “big six” are largely doing the same thing. Barbados itself is up for sale under neoliberalism, if there arrives a buyer.

    We see Peter Thiel has conclude that the liberal democracy social construct has failed. That the system cannot afford the social welfare benefits which have become normal. Thiel has no problems when corporate welfare where billionaire eat at the public trough. So Thiel is moving to Argentina.

    Argentina, a racist country which this South Afrikan jew now seeks. A unique country which purposefully genocided it’s Black population by using them as canon fodder in wars. A country which has chosen a certain kind of immigration.

    Thiel’s move to Argentina and the reasons given are consistent with the thinking of the billionaire and trillionaire class. They intend to leave the “rabble” to fight for scraps, to face an empty natiomal cupboard.

  11. Artax Avatar
    Artax

    @ David

    I remember Mapp’s Garment Factory, which was owned by Ulric Mapp, and Yankee Garments, owned by George Hadchity, a Lebanese.

    Both businesses were located in Grazettes Industrial Park a few years ago.

    I remember Mapp’s had two stores in Roebuck Street and clothes outlets under the name ‘Uniforms Unlimited.’ His sons migrated to the US, I think in the early 1980s.
    The business did not survive very long after he died.

    Yankee Garments, on the other hand, has continued to survive after the death of Hadchity, with his son Christopher continuing its operations.

    Alleyne of Shamrock Supermarket had several children, none of whom, unfortunately, took over operation of the business as he became older.

  12. David Avatar
    David

    @Artax

    It is worth a case study or two why household black businesses die after 1st generation. Everson Ellcock seems to be holding on for the moment but in the scheme of things is not a big player.

  13. NorthernObserver Avatar
    NorthernObserver

    @David
    In fairness, it is not the Receiver’s job to return the company to financial stability. Rather to ensure all those owed monies get as much as possible.
    The reality is we don’t know the condition when the entity changed hands in 2023? Nor the decisions taken thereafter.
    We can “guess” other options were considered prior to the Receiver’s appointment.

  14. David Avatar
    David

    @NO

    Fair enough because like you stated we are not privy to the direction given to Sambrano, who seems to have undertaken the role of Grenville Phillips senior.

  15. NorthernObserver Avatar
    NorthernObserver

    Weeee love to wax on Sagicor, yet last I looked they were doing ok. Rumour on the street a while back, is they sought a buyer for their GEL and other regional holdings within their pension funds.
    Talking about GEL, I see they have a new’ish Chief Risk Officer who is African, and I mean from Africa. And according to the papers they are looking for a new CEO.
    SOL, got sold again, and is now owned by Suncor USA. Will they divest of Caribbean holdings like the Banks? Esp the retail end, vs oil itself.
    The BSE is not fit for purpose. Unless the region can find a regional exchange of some mass, more and more entities will position themselves offshore.

  16. David Avatar
    David

    @NO

    On your last note what are your thoughts about Roberts? Is it a naked capital grab to fun expansion? Minister Kerri Symmonds seems to believe it is all good.

  17. NorthernObserver Avatar
    NorthernObserver

    Haven’t followed closely, but both the former joint owners Proven and Ansa, have their own set of financial challenges, so my eyes see a partial sale via IPO. Exactly what it will fund is beyond my pay grade, I’d guess themselves?. Caribbean markets are hungry for investment grade anything, so Roberts will be attractive.

  18. David Avatar
    David

    https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZGjHOeuB_k/

  19. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    NO

    Any entity could look like it’s doing well under those circumstances.

    But that avoids the central question.

    Who owns it now. Certainly, not any small mutual policyholders running around the Caribbean. And even when they did, the likes of you were not so protective of the real owners.

    This writer was certainly near these circumstances. Nobody pushing the agenda then, on their side, was talking about such a radical and deleterious turn of events.

    Well, if you’re a dyed in the wool globalist, everything that’s not nailed down everywhere could be sold to the highest bidder and they will all look good. At least following your theory.

    Maybe the NISS too. Even the government itself. Yes, sell everything then!

  20. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    NO

    Do you really think that sensible Afrikan people care that such a hire means anything.

    Especially when these companies you referred to have for centuries stuck firmly to Whiteness, denied Black Bajan any general role in these corporations, even when they owned them.

    A woman here once rightly referred to you as a White man. Apposite! For only the adherence to a degenerative Whiteness could explain this aged and tired canard told millions of times by Bajan Whites, even in Canadá now, to compensate for an innate racism.

    Real Afrikan people, knowing better, would most likely consider such a person to be an oreo – Black on the outside, White on the inside, like Dodridge Miller and many more.

  21. NorthernObserver Avatar
    NorthernObserver

    Pacha
    Do you think I have a clue, what “real Afrikan people” would consider the newly hired CRO? I merely made an observation. It is you who rambled on with your own various interpretations.
    As far as demutualization, weren’t the same policyholders offered shares (ownership) at the time? To answer your question, I haven’t a clue who owns Sagicor today. I once owned some shares, but after SPAC move, I opted to sell. However, I would imagine, unless they also opted to cash out, there would many thousands of small Sagicor shareholders around the Caribbean.

  22. David Avatar
    David

    Good point NO, the blogmaster recalls this was a big talking point, why did so many Barbadians who were allocated shares based on policies held coming out of the transition from Mutual to Sagicor elect to sell?

  23. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    Anybody who knows anything about taking a company public, the mechanisms therein, and the relationships policyholders have in a mutual ‘company’ could not possibly make so unrepresentative a comparison.

    And you are merely dealing at the fringes.

    What about all the rights Black policyholders held for decades but were prevented from exercising at any level? Where were the valuation metrics for those? Instead, the reductionists merely seek to make a linear argument in IPO terms only. Yes, White people and their satraps can do whatever dey like!

    Otherwise, the larger issues relating to national patrimony could be duly ignored for expediency. These are the same people who never tire of complaining why things appear not to be working, at the centre.

  24. John2 Avatar
    John2

    Barbados oil futures looking up

  25. NorthernObserver Avatar
    NorthernObserver

    David
    What Pacha is alluding to,(I think) is like Bushie ‘think co-op’. Every policyholder has a vote, not based on policy size; the society is meant to plough profits back in to the benefit of owners, policyholders. The IPO creates shares, one vote per share, hence easier to raise capital etc
    But…BMLAS was not the first, nor the last to demutualize. And essentially prior to that, they were not operating as a society of equals. Recall, all pigs are equal but some are more equal than others.
    In Barbados, it is easy to draw that line as elites vs the common man, which is often true wherever it occurs, which is essentially interpreted as white vs black. Any black who doesn’t support the same view as the common man is an Oreo. Yet, there were several policyholders who were happy to convert policy benefits to cash, irrespective of skin tone.
    The NISSS, talking of national patrimony, is the true ultimate. Yet you don’t hear one shite from most, but wait til the day it can no longer function as designed, and the ants will crawl out of the wood. Despite its demise which has been telegraphed for years.
    Do you see any of the representatives of the common man creating a ruckus? You’ll be told the union leaders etc are Oreos? Ditto for the various Co-op member leaders? Or the church?
    If you don’t exercise your rights, you’ll lose them.

  26. David Avatar
    David

    Didn’t Barbadians demonstrate the same interest when Barbados National Bank was on the chopping block? We are our worst enemy.

    The concerns around Mutual at the time are not lost on the blogmaster but …

  27. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    NO

    NO need to “think co-op! For it was a co-op already. But only for Whites. Not even the Oreos got in on the real action. Far less the Untermensch.

    More precisely, the arithmetic for an IPO would have generally gone like this.

    A determination would have been made as to what was the target market valuation. Then another would have been made as to what current policyholder value was to be. Both paralell equations possessing separate internal logics.

    But both artificial constructs.

    In between these two is a space which would have allowed the “market makers” to artificially create an unjust surplus. Certainly a calculus not in the interests of the long disenfranchised policyholders, the Blacks predominately!

    A mathematics of financialization.

    But why is it necessary to rehash these circumstances when a lived and sordid recent history points to net losses to the country, the region. Are these not the ultimate determinants of failure?

    You are free to die on that hill which says that markets are free, fair and the ultimate arbiter of value. Permit Pacha to demure.

    That Sagicor is doing quite well, accordingly to you, stares into the face of a founding country disowned by its progeny in seeking other shores. Even as the world could be within weeks of a deep depression while the artificialities called markets are going even higher and higher, entirely based on manipulation, and in ignorance of all fundamentals.

    The last words are yours.

  28. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    @ NO / Pacha…
    Bushie wants the last word….

    SAGICOR is the single worse thing to EVER have afflicted Brassbados post emancipation.
    Much like a spoilt ‘first son’, who benefitted from all of the family sacrifices,
    and then went on to betray his less blessed siblings
    by joining with foreign pirates to rob the family assets…
    …as long as he ended up with his $6Million/year pension

    Where there was a ‘Mutual’ operation excellently placed to take up the PROFESSIONAL, HIGH-QUALITY, ETHICAL ownership of local assets – AND TO DO SO ON BEHALF OF ITS WIDE POLICY / SHARE OWNERSHIP, … instead, a collection of racist, albino-centric, opportunists – WITH THE AID OF KNOWN black Judases, converted that opportunity into a BIG BRASS BOWL ISLAND ROBBERY for their own personal enrichment.

    But Bushie won’t fret over such evil-doers…
    Cause their donkeys are in line for appropriate karmic justice…

    What a place…

  29. David Avatar
    David

    @Bush Tea

    How was the policy share ownership dispersed the time?

  30. NorthernObserver Avatar
    NorthernObserver

    Pacha/Bushie
    I have a question.
    To play in the BMLAS you had to be a policy holder, a member.
    The largest wealth fund in the nation, for which membership is free, is the National Insurance System.
    How come you are not barking up the ass of the administrators? You are going to wait for complete failure before you keep a noise?
    Or do nothing? And complain later people got unfaired. The Black population has an unquestioned majority ownership in the NIS.

  31. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    NO

    With BMLAS we only had to deal with the local, White, corporate elites – direct people’s power, we supposed.

    With NISS we have the trifecta. The corporate elites, the political elites and their globalist fascist, overlords internationally, who direct both.

    Is it not clear to you that the decisión has already long been made to destroy ALL popular social systems, everywhere?

    That’s why private resource ownership has become vastly more important. Enter BMLAS!

    Have these same demonic White demons not essentially bankrupted the American social security administration (SSA) after borrowing all the workers’ savings and promoting the idea that it’s not an insurance program but government welfare?

    And at the highest level of analysis, are these not the two sides of the same project of public disempowerment?

  32. David Avatar
    David

    Regional Unity on Renewable Energy the Only Option to Reduce Electricity
    If Regional Governments are serious about reducing energy costs for their citizens – more decisive action must be taken from a united front, including common approaches on legislation.

    Dominica’s Minister of Energy, Dr. Vince Henderson spoke extensively on the issue while admitting that his island submitted entirely to expert analysis with their geo thermal energy vision.

    Dr. Henderson, speaking this morning at the 56th Caribbean Development Bank Meeting in the Bahamas, said similar projects can impact the region if the right approach is taken.

    Source: Starcom

  33. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    Henderson is partly right but largely wrong. Solar should be an essential part of the energy mix but not the backbone.

    Nuclear and most importantly thorium, when perfected, will represent the quantum technological leap required – cheap, abundant energy. Even free!

    Then there’s radio wave energy developed by Maxwell Chikumbutsu, if it can be verified.

    Of course, the gangsters running the oil majors have for centuries killed anybody and anything challenging their cartel.

    Of course, people like old man Bushie would be a sceptic about some of these ideas.

    But not even Bushie could explain how all of these UAPs flying bout the place with no known energy source.

  34. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    @ Pacha
    Excellent response to NO’s question about the NISSS…

    But leave the renewable energy questions to the bushman PLEASE … lol

    The Dominica guy is talking the usual shiite that we normally hear from the likes of the Tire-Slasher Kerrie.
    Political diatribe from clueless political clowns – who are forced to make speeches at functions…

    Imagine he PERSONALLY caused the solar panel tragedy in Barbados, and is now the new driver of the battery storage idiocy being executed…
    Much like bringing back Wally to f-up the QEH…What a place!!!

    There is NO COMMON REGIONAL SOLUTION to our energy challenges.
    This should be obvious, given the COMPLETELY DIFFERENT environments facing each country – and even facing different REGIONS within the islands.

    The only ‘COMMON’ imperative is that those making the POLICY and EXECUTIVE decisions are;
    – qualified to do so
    – competent to execute
    – ethical and honest
    – transparently working for the PEOPLE and not the albino-centrics.

    OBVIOUSLY, we are NOWHERE close to such a regional (or local) imperative…

    So… Bushie predicts MASSIVE energy chaos ahead…

    What a place!!

  35. David Avatar
    David

    The irony is that we have black or locally owned companies falling like 9 pins.

  36. NorthernObserver Avatar
    NorthernObserver

    Most interesting.
    According to AI, over 300 life insurance/assurance entities demutualised globally between 1985 and 2015.
    Other non life entities, like stock exchanges, co-ops of many types, building associations also demutualised.
    Not saying they were right or wrong to do so, only that they did.

    As far as the NISSS, a cop out. It could be a trifecta, superfecta or high-5 of challenges. To suggest you do nothing because social systems everywhere are being destroyed, doesn’t make it right. Especially when right before your very eyes, the operators have failed continuously to comply with laws of the land.

    When the fucking architect of the so called lost decade, he who forced the NIS to buy Bonds way in excess of any recommended amount, and then diverted public employee NIS contributions to the government coffers, can be made a Senator, and subsequent Minister, by his former opposition party, AND not a single fucking member of the press has asked any intrusive questions, I guess to do nothing is likely ok?

    Keep playing the colour and class associations. It will get you nowhere quickly. But may satisfy you internally. We saw it coming but……

  37. Pachamama Avatar
    Pachamama

    Did you also see the growing wave of fascist regimes all over the Western world.

    These are your people, driving your systems, curtailing all kinds of human rights once fictitiously held dear.

    In America, we have a racist fascist, a common criminal, a mafia Don of all Dons, as president. An out and out racist.

    We have a Secretary of War, who has all kinds of racist, White supremacist tattoos emblazened on his chest.

    In Canadá, a country which continues to genocide the indigenous peoples, can do no better than throw up a PM from the globalist, fascist, elites. As he follows the genocidal path in Palestine like his predecessor, who had the descendants of Nazis and long-lived real Nazis around that government.

    What’s happening in Barbados cannot be stopped. What’s happening in the USA and Canadá, the Western world, cannot be stopped. And you would have been able to come to that determination yourself if you really and deeply understood current phenomena. Unless there are massive and sustained revolutionary everywhere.

    Even for the student protesting in support of Palestine, a number were throw out of school, places on black lists, never to find work.

    Fascism is best understood as the conjoining of political and economic elites. And it expreses itself in economy by using governments to consolidate all wealth, private and public, into the hands of fewer and fewer billionares and trillionaire. Meaning that the 0.01 percent have more money than god and the rest, catching their asses.

    Only today this writer had the displeasure of having to read the new rules surrounding IPOs. Those rules are such that even people like you who swears by sacredness of markets must cringe when you realize the changes being made to fcuk up everybody but the few.

    https://youtu.be/8FjrSNSGO1A?si=A8Xvv3rexPdMBTAu

    See a shortened view of the report Pacha had to read today and try to stop talking shiite, suspend dated notions and face the deepest truths about the world of today. Those are primarily based in race, class and gender.

  38. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    Shiite @Pacha!!!
    This is your best rant …EVER!!
    …and not even a hint of abuse thrown at the bushman.

    @ NO
    This present world is the Albino-Centric world that has been CREATED by those who dominated our societies – mostly ‘vi et armis’, and over the last century especially.

    It is a materialistic, greed-driven (capitalist), racist construct, … that has effectively transformed even its brass bowl VICTIMS into conscripts…

    So the mutual (community-centric) organizations have been ‘capitalized’-
    … the Credit Unions are just money machines
    … the governments worship money – however acquired
    … the brass bowl sheeple even value themselves by shiite dollars…
    … and the politicians snatch dollars wherever it is EASIEST to do so…
    So…
    The NISSS is just par for the course.
    Just like HOPE housing
    Just like STEAL housing
    Just like the vaccine scam, Four Seasons, Carifesta …
    …AND ALL THE OTHER SCAMS THAT WE DO NOT KNOW OF,
    – BECAUSE THEY FIRED THE AUDITOR GENERAL AND THE PAC.

    The whole shiite place is doomed boss!
    Weighed in the balance and found wanting…

    Check on a wall near you, and see if there is anything written…

    What a place!!

  39. David Avatar
    David

    Wow, so defeatist. History shows that systems as dominant as they are inevitably collapse. Evolution cannot be stopped. There is always the hope that the phoenix will continue to rise.

    For those that believe they are onside with a just cause, they will continue the fight.

    Keep hope alive.

  40. David Avatar
    David

    Splitting hairs. Training people for the world means equipping our people with the nous to compete to be able to achieve their dreams and sustain the lifestyle that is desired. We love to split hairs.

    Reclaiming excellence in black education

    Someone has shot this bullet, supposedly a silver bullet, called “we have to educate Barbadians towards being world class citizens”.

    Without a plausible explanation, I deduce that they – the architects of the school system – mean to turn every Bajan into the type of person that meshes nicely into a Eurocentric culture and the demands of a western society controlled by a money-grabbing set of international corporations and their mega-rich shareholder class who, for purposes of dominance, have erased the rich history of the black man.

    Disadvantaged us

    We, by we I mean the timid bureaucrats, have to jump on the wheel. The same wheel that disadvantaged us – now spinning in a different arc – to show the Caucasian world that we have come of age. Regrettably, this is without any reference to the atrocities committed against the black race by the same people, who we run so speedily to catch up to. Albeit, that they continue to plunge the world into the abyss.

    Studying struggles

    Black people have dropped the baton. In school we should be studying the ambitions and struggles of Marcus Garvey, Muammar Gaddafi, Fidel Castro, Walter Rodney and all the African presidents who were assassinated or deposed by America, Britain and their European allies.

    Our youngsters would then have a strong grounding in this world. It is from there that we should pivot. – Andrew Bynoe

  41. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    Mr Bynoe is spot on….

  42. David Avatar
    David

    You would agree @Bush Tea. It is ironic Bynoe has to thank a white man for his push start in business.

  43. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    @ David
    Perhaps you mean a white skinned man.

    Albino centrics come in all shades and hues, and ‘community centrics’ …thought increasingly rare, also exists in various hues.

    One of the most community-centric people PERSONALLY known to Bushie is a Bajan white,
    …and one of the worse albino-centrics is black as shiite…!
    LOL
    It is a CHARACTER thing.

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