Black Immigrant Daily News

Prime Minister Andrew Holness has led tributes to prominent businessmen and economist Dr Marshall McGowan Hall, hailing him for his “incalculable contribution to national development”.

Hall, widely recognised for his association with the Jamaica Producers Group Limited, where he served as director for over 40 years and as group managing director for 27 years, died on Tuesday morning. He was 88.

Hall is the father of the current Jamaica Producers Group CEO, Jeffrey.

Mr Marshall Hall passed away on Tuesday, November 23, 2022. He was 88 years old.

Holness said with Hall’s death, Jamaica had lost “one of its foremost academic thinkers and business leader”, adding that the country “will continue to benefit from his legacy for generations to come.”

The prime minister said while Hall served at Jamaica Producers, he “pioneered the large-scale modernisation of banana production in Jamaica which sustained the local industry and boosted national employment and export.”

Outside of Hall’s distinguished career at Jamaica Producers, Holness underscored his academic career as an economist who served as dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of the West Indies, as well as head of the department of management studies.

“Among other significant leadership roles at UWI, Dr Hall was a widely published writer in the areas of micro and institutional economics,” Holness said, adding that Hall also served as chairman of several other entities and public bodies, including Jamaica Public Service (JPS) and National Commercial Bank and Mutual Life.

“I express my deepest sympathy to his family, friends, loved ones and colleagues in both the business and academic fields,” stated the prime minister.

The Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) said it remembered Hall “as an inspirational leader who made outstanding contributions to Jamaica”.

The PNP added: “We are deeply saddened by his passing, as he was one of Jamaica’s finest economists and business development leaders.

“Dr Hall was a true patriot who believed in the upliftment of people through education and economic development,” the party shared in a statement on Tuesday.

For his part, Opposition leader and PNP president Mark Golding offered his sympathies to the family and friends of the businessman and economist.

“He was a gentleman and a brilliant scholar who loved his country and dedicated his life to contributing to the development and strengthening of private and public sectors in post-independence Jamaica,” said Golding.

In its tribute, the Keith Duncan-led Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) recognised Hall as “an astute businessman, who served his country with distinction in both academia and business”.

The PSOJ highlighted his passion for the growth and innovation of Jamaica’s banana industry which has been exemplified throughout his years as group managing director of Jamaica Banana Producers Association Limited (now Jamaica Producers Group).

“He (Hall) is accredited with spearheading the resuscitation of the banana industry in St Mary and Jamaica after hurricane Allen in 1980 and again (after) hurricane Gilbert in 1988,” the PSOJ said.

The powerful private sector lobby said Hall’s “unwavering commitment to the development of Jamaica’s private and public sectors is an exceptional legacy that has been etched in Jamaica’s history.”

The body noted its own honouring of Hall for his “invaluable role as an outstanding business leader by recognising him as the 2004 PSOJ Hall Of Fame inductee.”

Meanwhile, the PSOJ also recognised Hall for distinguishing himself as a “remarkable intellectual”, pointing to his extended years in academia locally.

His vast academic expertise, according to the PSOJ, has also extended beyond the shores of Jamaica, having served as Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Washington University and Makerere University in Uganda.

Equally saddened by Hall’s passing is the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce (JCC), which said Jamaica had lost “one of its most fervent and formidable sons”.

“Marshall Hall’s lifetime achievements indicate that he believed in the principle of giving back and on institution-building.

“He served selflessly as a mentor and was an inspiration to many, spanning several generations and delivered such tangible contributions to Jamaica and the region that his impact will be felt far into the future,” stated the JCC.

In recognition of his lifetime of business leadership and public service, Hall was awarded the Order of Jamaica and the Order of Distinction in the Rank of Commander and was inducted into the Private Sector Hall of Fame.

Hall was born in Rollington Town, Kingston in 1934 and was educated at Kingston College.

He was a committed family man, married to Dr Jeanette Hall for over 60 years. He has three children (Dr Allyson Hall, Andrea Perkins, and Jeffrey Hall), four grandchildren, a close extended family, colleagues, and friends.

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Black Immigrant Daily News

Back in 2016, Jamie Clark of Seattle was a software engineer who planned to take a year off of work to finish a master’s degree in computational linguistics.

One year turned into three and my career changed to financial planning.

Nowadays, Clark, who uses they/them pronouns, believes the experience makes them a better advisor – particularly since their career break didn’t turn out as originally planned.

“Part of our job as financial planners is to help people be prepared,” says Clark, now a certified financial planner who recently launched their own firm, Ruby Pebble Financial Planning.

“And I want to help people build that flexibility.”

Career breaks are extended and usually unpaid stretches of time off work. Such breaks can be aspirational — giving you time to travel, pursue a degree, change careers or launch a business.

Or, they can be prompted by life events, such as caring for a child, nursing a family member, or dealing with an illness or burnout.

Whatever the cause, some planning can help you make the most of your break.

Save and budget diligently

CFP Henry Hoang of Irvine, California, doesn’t believe most people need detailed budgets, as long as they’re saving adequately for their goals. But career breaks are an exception, he says.

When your paychecks stop, you’ll want to have enough savings to sustain you. That starts with knowing precisely what you’re spending today and estimating what your expenses will be during your break.

Some costs might decline, such as commuting or child care. But you also might have new costs, including higher health insurance premiums if your current coverage is employer-subsidized.

Once you calculate how much you need to save, consider adding a fudge factor equal to two or three months’ worth of expenses in case it takes longer than expected to land your next job, Hoang suggests.

One of Hoang’s friends didn’t do that and wound up raiding his 401(k) to pay the bills.

And speaking of retirement: Extended breaks could mean you’ll need to work past the normal retirement age or increase your savings rate significantly to retire on time.

If you’re planning to take more than two years off, use a retirement calculator or consult a financial planner to see how that might affect your plans to retire, Hoang says.

Clark saved enough from a high-paying job to cover living expenses for two years and was able to stretch that to three years after getting married.

Their spouse paid the bills and Clark used the remaining savings to pay tuition and other costs to get their financial planning credential.

Clark says that careful tracking of expenses and thoughtful budgeting not only helped make their savings last, but it also alleviated some of the stress of Clark being without a paycheck.

“There are always surprises, but it’s good to try and minimize them, or at least minimize impact on your finances,” Clark says.

Make a plan for your time

You may feel you need a break from strict schedules, but having no plan means you could waste this precious time you prepared and saved for.

Hoang has another cautionary tale from a client who started his break with a strong desire to change careers and spend more time with his young children.

His days quickly filled up with parenting duties, and he never made time to explore other jobs, Hoang says. When his savings ran out, he ended up going back into his same field.

“Having clarity on what you really want out of this career break could make a tremendous difference in experience overall,” Hoang says.

The details of your plan will depend on your career break goals, but consider scheduling lunch with a professional colleague every month or so to maintain your network and stay abreast of developments in your field.

If you’re considering a career change, make a timeline for when you’ll accomplish certain steps, such as meeting with a career counsellor and determining what education or certifications you’ll need.

Consider Alternatives

An extended career break may not be possible. You may have too much debt, too many bills or too many people depending on you to go months or years without a paycheck.

Even if you have the savings, you may be understandably wary about leaving the job you have without another one lined up.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re stuck.

A few employers offer paid sabbaticals, while others provide unpaid leave to workers who need a break.

You may be eligible for up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act if you have a newborn, adopt or foster a child, suffer from a serious health condition or are caring for an immediate family member such as a child, spouse or parent with a serious health condition.

Given the tight labour market, your employer may be willing to adjust your workload, transfer you to a job with less responsibility or reduce your hours.

That could free up the time and energy you need to focus on what’s important to you — and what you want next in your life.

By Liz Weston of NerdWallet

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Black Immigrant Daily News

St John’s, Antigua and Barbuda: Regional insurance provider Sagicor was proud to sponsor the Antigua and Barbuda Cycling Federation’s annual Schools Invitational which was hosted on Sunday 13th November 2022 at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium.

The schools on the island were invited to enter their cycling enthusiasts into two races designed to test their speed and stamina.

Overall, eight schools competed: Antigua and Barbuda International Institute of Technology, All Saints Secondary School, Antigua Grammar School, Clare Hall Secondary School, Glanvilles Secondary School, Irene B. Williams Secondary School, Princess Margaret Secondary School and the St. Joseph’s Academy in four categories:

Males 11 – 13, Males 14 – 18, Females 11 – 13 and Females 14 and over.

Each of the four categories competed in the Circuit race as well as the two male categories and a single female category competing in the Last Man Standing.

Marisia James, Assistant Vice President of Sagicor Life’s Eastern Caribbean Operations and Branch Manager for the Antigua Branch said, “Sagicor continues to support activities and events which elevate the youth, particularly in the sporting arena.

Across the Eastern Caribbean, we have provided financial support to events that have allowed our Antigua youth to compete at the regional level, such as the EC Golf Amateur Championships 2022held in October in St Lucia at which the Antigua team emerged as champions.

We also sponsored the Sagicor Junior International Tennis Tournament which was held in St Lucia in August and saw several young tennis players from Antigua competing.

We expect that this level of commitment will continue into 2023 as we seek to ensure that our youth have ample opportunity to develop their sporting muscles.”

During the prize giving and presentation of medals, each place winner received a small “goodie-bag” comprising items provided by the Association, Sagicor and other sponsors.

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Black Immigrant Daily News

Prime Minister Gaston Browne is seeking to remove Antigua and Barbuda’s name from the FTX Scandal.

He addressed the issue extensively when he spoke on Pointe FM on Saturday. Listen to him below:

It’s a collapse that some have called crypto’s “Lehman moment.”

The bankruptcy of the crypto giant FTX and the resignation of its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, has left customers in limbo and investors writing off what once looked like the next big thing in tech.

And it happened in a matter of days. But in the complex world of crypto, such a collapse can be hard to parse. Here’s the basics of what went down:

What is FTX?

FTX is a digital currency exchange, a platform where people could buy and sell digital assets like bitcoin, dogecoin and ether. Such platforms rose in popularity in recent years as more people looked to invest in cryptocurrencies without the hassle of dealing with the technical side of such transactions, such as setting up a crypto wallet.

How did it become so big?

The company, founded in 2019, quickly rose to international prominence through a series of high-profile acquisitions, aggressive marketing strategies and low trading fees. Competitor  platforms include Kraken, Coinbase and Gemini.

Even those unfamiliar with the technology were lured to FTX with promises that they could park their money in accounts and earn much higher yields than at traditional banks.

Major venture capital groups also bought in, investing almost $2 billion in the company.

Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX’s 30-year-old founder, became the face of the company and, to some, crypto at large. Celebrity endorsements and major sports sponsorships made FTX hard to miss.

The first red flags

Not long after Bankman-Fried started FTX, crypto began to boom. The price of bitcoin, which had traded at around $10,000, shot up in 2021, peaking at more than $64,000. Venture capital money flooded into all things blockchain and crypto, and crypto platforms moved to attract customers beyond the technologists and blockchain evangelists that once fueled its rise.

The price of bitcoin, generally seen as an indicator of the broader crypto market, declined dramatically from its late 2021 heights. It now trades at around $16,000. Other crypto and token values followed suit.

The broader crypto industry decline had already forced many major platforms to shut down, but FTX seemed immune, even buying up some of its struggling competitors.

But things began to change earlier this month, when the balance sheet of a crypto investing firm that was also owned by Bankman-Fried, Alameda Research, was published by CoinDesk, a crypto-focused digital media website.

It showed that Alameda held a large amount of a digital currency created by FTX called FTT. And though that FTT held a certain market value, if the price were to drop,  Alameda would be at risk of insolvency.

What is FTT?

FTT is a digital token created by FTX that is similar to cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. Many crypto platforms now create their own tokens as a way to encourage people to use their services by offering perks associated with their tokens. As such, tokens can act like stock in the platform.

These digital tokens use blockchain technology, in which computers contribute to a shared ledger that can be used to track digital assets. The first blockchain project, bitcoin, relies on many computers competing against one another to create a distributed system that no one computer can control.

But not all blockchains, cryptocurrencies or tokens work the same way, and many are no longer distributed as bitcoin. Tokens on a blockchain can be created by a single entity, as was the case with FTT, which was minted by FTX and given out as rewards to users. FTT was also less transparent than other tokens, making it hard to track just how many tokens had been created. People could buy and sell FTT, but trading was relatively limited. Other platforms also held the token.

A virtual bank run

After Alameda’s balance sheet was leaked, Changpeng “CZ’’ Zhao, CEO of the crypto platform Binance, a rival of FTX, announced on Nov. 6 that his company would sell off all its FTT tokens. The price of FTT dropped sharply.

As the price dropped, many FTX customers moved to withdraw their assets from the platform. Though the extent of the connections between Alameda and FTX were not yet public, a series of recent crypto platform collapses had already put the crypto community on edge.

Those withdrawals would end up resembling a classic bank run, in which people worried about a bank’s solvency rush to get their money out before it runs out of cash. Billions of dollars poured out of the platform.

On Nov. 8, FTX stopped allowing customers to take money out of the platform.

An unbalanced balance sheet

What was not yet public was the extent of the connections between Alameda and FTX, or just how bad things had gotten for Bankman-Fried’s companies.

Those connections began to become clearer in the days following FTX’s move to stop withdrawals, as would its financial challenges. Media organizations including Bloomberg, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal and others cited anonymous sources saying that  FTX needed $8 billion to cover the gap between what it owed and what it could pay out. NBC News has not verified those reports, and Bankman-Fried said in an interview Monday with a Vox journalist over Twitter DM that he needed to raise $8 billion in the next two weeks to make things right with account holders.

Sam Bankman-Fried on Capitol Hill on Sept. 15.Graeme Sloan / Sipa USA via AP

The Wall Street Journal and CNBC, also citing anonymous sources, reported that Alameda had used FTX funds for trading.

And in the Vox interview, Bankman-Fried appeared to confirm reports that funds had moved between FTX and Alameda, adding that he “thought Alameda had enough collateral” to cover the moves.

Soon after that, blockchain analysts tracked the flow of $400 million of assets out of FTX accounts, though it was unclear why those funds had been moved.

In a series of text messages to Reuters, Bankman-Fried denied funds had been furtively funneled from one company to the other. He blamed the transfers on an internal mislabeling issue.

However, it is difficult to ascertain how and why the company’s funds were handled the way they were, according to a court filing from FTX’s current CEO, John Ray, who helped navigate Enron through its corporate bankruptcy process in the early 2000s.

That’s because FTX and its sister companies allegedly didn’t follow standard financial reporting procedures.

Normally, a business produces balance sheets several times a year that provide reliable information on the company’s assets (what the business owns) and its liabilities (what it owes), among other things. But the balance sheets of Bankman-Fried’s firms were never audited, according to the company’s bankruptcy court filings, meaning there is no reliable account or paper trail of what money the company had and where it went.

Ray called FTX’s poor management and financial opacity “unprecedented.”

“Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here.”

Ray wrote that the company has thus far secured $740 million of cryptocurrency held by the various companies that made up FTX and Alameda, a number that is only a “fraction” of what they hope to recover.

A lifeline yanked away

Before the full extent of the crisis became public, and desperate to keep his companies afloat, Bankman-Fried grasped for a lifeline as signs of a broader crypto crash loomed.

Zhao, one of FTX’s first investors, stepped in to make a play for his former rival. On Nov. 8, he announced that Binance would purchase FTX for an undisclosed amount in what would essentially constitute a bailout for the beleaguered firm. But Binance quickly backed out, with Zhao citing reports that FTX had mismanaged user funds and information gleaned during the standard due diligence process that accompanies such deals.

Binance Co-Founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao speaks at the Web Summit in Lisbon on Nov. 1..Patricia De Melo Moreira / AFP – Getty Images

Bankman-Fried has acknowledged the company’s problems on Twitter, where he remains active. Last week he posted a lengthy thread that started “1) I’m sorry. That’s the biggest thing.”

“I f—– up, and should have done better,” he added.

Last Friday, Nov. 11, Bankman-Fried stepped down as CEO of FTX, and the companies he oversaw filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press, citing anonymous sources, have both reported that FTX now faces investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice. NBC News has not verified those reports.

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