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Jules Vasquez
"Will Mr. Jeffrey Locke be the new CEO as has been reported?"

PM Dean Barrow
"I don't know that I want to confirm anything just at the moment. The Senate has to meet this afternoon and the GG has to sign the bill into law. He is as I understand it in Belize City today and there is some doubt as to whether he will be available after 4. If the Senate doesn't get through by 4 his signature will not be until tomorrow. It is not until he signs that the relevant orders can proceed to be made and so we'll be getting a little ahead of ourselves I think if we confirm any name in terms of what we have in mind for the CEO position."

Jules Vasquez
"How soon would you like the takeover to be effective?"

PM Dean Barrow
"If the orders can be sign tomorrow afternoon - as soon as the orders are sign. The Chairman of the Board who is Rodwell Williams and has been the chairman from the time of the change of government is standing by with the prospective interim CEO. I have to go tomorrow because the meeting with President Calderon has been confirm for Wednesday in Guatemala City and so I will be leaving because I really need to talk to the President about this whole issue and how CFE can help. The Deputy Prime Minister will then be acting Prime Minister. If we can get the orders made tomorrow afternoon, we would expect that the chairman of the board together with the acting Prime Minister and the interim CEO would immediately go into the company both from the point of view of effecting as quickly as possible the implementation of the takeover but also to reassure staff - to make it quite clear that as I said nobody is being force out, nobody is being ask to leave, nobody is being required to leave. We have heard that executive management which consists of about 4 persons or so, we know that FORTIS had made offers to them. They are likely to go but it is not as our prompting, it is not at our urging and so the idea of people going in as quickly as possible - the chairman of the board, the interim CEO and the acting Prime Minister is to reassure the people there and to try and indicate and confirm and effect as orderly and as smooth and as quick a transition as possible."

Jules Vasquez
"Compensation?"

PM Dean Barrow
"Compensation, again I am no expert but BTL would imagine the compensation there would have to be far more than in this case. BTL was and remains a profitable company - there is no question at all of that and so we will have to when we pay compensation - compensate on that basis. With BEL it's clearly a different story. Stan Marshall said he would sell for the book value. There is clearly a difference between book value and marker value and compensation is based on market value. Now market value takes into account not just the long term liabilities but the fact that currently operationally the company is pretty much in collapse. I don't know the assets clearly have some financial worth but if the company was employing the assets in a loss making venture and you can't sell the assets to anybody else because the assets are only good for the transmission of electricity. I would think that the end of the day the compensation would not be merely as much as some people especially in the private sector seem to fair."

Things have changed since that interview; as we noted at the top of the newscast, the Governor General did sign the bill into law this afternoon - and the order of acquisition was signed by Utilities Minister Elvin Penner and Finance Minister Dean Barrow just before 5:00 pm - so the law is in effect as of tonight.

The new members of the Board of Directors and the CEO will go in to the company tomorrow morning where Chairman Rodwell Williams is expected to have a brief meeting.

We note that there's a lot of catching up to do. That's because there's no at the wheel! 7news has confirmed that the company's CEO Lyn young voluntarily terminated his own contract on Friday and also terminated the four most senior managers who form the executive management team. They are Vice PR Vice President Engineering, Joseph Sooknandan, Vice President of Finance Rene Blanco, Vice President Customer Care, Curtis Eck and Company Secretary Juliet Estell.

Why fired? Well it seems there are greater benefits for those senior executives when they are terminated as opposed to resigning. Young told us this evening that when there is a change of ownership - the new owner should have a chance to get a clean start going forward, and also indicated that the senior managers are entitled to their severance. There appears to be some dispute in the eyes of government as to whether these terminations were made with full board knowledge and approval, and that is expected to be an issue going forward.

Whatever the case, there are a lot of empty posts to fill urgently and a leadership vacuum - as the senior managers left the car running with no one at the wheel. Former CEO Young today confirmed that he has not been there from Friday and will not be there when the new team arrives tomorrow - which the Prime Minister did not expect to be the case. He told us as much today:..

Young this evening told us that if it was an amicable transition of ownership he certainly would have stayed around. He said he is not the kind of guy to be all for one side and then just switch allegiances when that side is pushed out…..