HCL’s Fifi calls it a day

Published: Friday August 1, 2008

Michael Anthony Fifi is to retire at the end of August as chief executive officer of the Home Construction Ltd (HCL) Group, a subsidiary of the Lawrence Duprey-chaired CL Financial Group.

A statement yesterday said Duprey announced Fifi’s pending retirement from the HCL Group at the company’s board meeting on July 16.

The statement said Fifi will retire on August 22, the day he turns 66, adding that he will remain on the board of CL Financial, “where he will continue to act in a consulting capacity on the real estate matters of the Group.”

Fifi’s duties as managing director of the HCL Group will be jointly assumed by Richard Le Blanc, former chief operations officer, and Hayden Ameerali, former manager, estates and community management at HCL.

Ameerali is currently the chief real estate officer at Colonial Life Insurance Company (Clico).

The statement said Fifi, who is currently in the US, is expected to return on Wednesday and is to meet with members of the media, business partners and other stakeholders “as part of the transition process.”

Fifi, an urban planner by profession, leaves the HCL Group after a 20-year relationship with the Duprey-led empire.

Several residential communities were constructed under Fifi’s tenure, including Millennium Park, Millennium Lakes, the surrounding Millennium Lakes Golf and Country Club, The Crossings at Santa Rosa West, East Gate on the Greens and Orchard Villas.

His departure as head of HCL comes after Trincity Mall in east Trinidad underwent a multi-million-dollar expansion.

Fifi, franchise owner of Benihana restaurant, had said in earlier interviews that an expanded Trincity Mall will eventually have one million square feet of retail space.

The mammoth $1.2 billion project, One Woodbrook Place (OWP), though, will not be completed under his direction.

In an interview last May, Fifi said OWP will be completed by the end of 2009. The project is at least 16 months behind schedule.

The original cost was $800 million.

The project had a scheduled December 2007 completion date.

“We’ll be delivering phase one by the third quarter of this year,” he had said.

Fifi said in looking at OWP objectively, he realised that the job, the scale of it, was underestimated. “The underestimation was really in the quantum of work.”

Fifi said in the interview that people who made downpayments on apartments at OWP will be paying a total of $3.5 million, roughly 28.5 per cent above the original price.

In the August 16, 2007, issue of the Business Guardian, Fifi said the project was overdue and overbudget because of skilled labour shortages and sharp increases in the price of construction materials.

HCL had a “soft launch” of OWP in May, to which banking and business executives and sporting personalities were invited to view two elegantly furnished model suites on the 15th floor.


Source: Trinidad Guardian Newspapers
http://www.guardian.co.tt/business1.html