Jeffrey Hall to chair fourth listed company

Jeffrey Hall takes over as chairman of Blue Power Group, effective today, May 1, succeeding founding Chairman Dr Dhiru Tanna, who retired on Saturday.

It’s his fourth chairmanship of a listed company, the others being Lumber Depot Limited, the retail hardware division of Blue Power that was spun off in 2019; port company Kingston Wharves Limited and second largest banking group, Scotiabank Jamaica.

The four have combined market values that top $173 billion.

Hall also heads another listed company, Jamaica Producers Group Limited, as managing director.

His chairmanship of Kingston Wharves relates to its position as a subsidiary of Jamaica Producers, a logistics and food conglomerate. He is personally invested in Blue Power and Lumber Deport, but holds less than one per cent interest in both through an entity called Swee Teen Chua.

Tanna, the founder of Blue Power Group and its chairman since 1997, will continue to serve as a director of the company. His demission of the chairmanship comes a decade after he handed the day-to-day operation of the company to a hired managing director.

The current board changes take effect just ahead of Blue Power’s extraordinary meeting on Monday for shareholders to vote on a restructuring of the company, including expansion of the board seats in pursuit of more diversity, it previously said.

Blue Power currently has eight seats filled by Kenneth Benjamin, Felice Campbell, Major Noel Dawes, Catherine Goodall, Jeffrey Hall, Peter Millingen, Dr Dhiru Tanna and Dr Laura Tanna.

Of the four listed companies Hall now chairs, two trade on the junior market and two on the main market, as large cap stocks. As of the close of trading on Friday, Blue Power had a market value of $$2.02 billion; Lumber Depot $$2.5 billion; Kingston Wharves $$59.3 billion and Scotia Group Jamaica $109.8 billion.

karena.bennett@gleanerjm.com