With the passing of Dr Anthony Norman Sabga, ORTT, at age 94, the nation has lost perhaps the last of the generation of men and women of will and determination, who created and shaped the independent state of Trinidad & Tobago in ways which will define it in the 21st century.
Sabga was born in 1923 in Syria and came here in 1930, riding a global wave of migration which continued through the 20th century. He began his life in humble circumstances, living in rented rooms on Nelson Street in Port-of-Spain, just off Marine Square (now the Brian Lara Promenade). The family comprised his two brothers, George and Solomon, two sisters, Jamily and Zariffi, and parents. His father had managed to open a small haberdashery on Queen Street in Port-of-Spain, NS Sabga & Sons.
As a boy, Anthony went to school where he fared badly because of the language barrier and a learning disability (dyslexia). At age 12, his father was forced to return to Syria and Anthony was given the responsibility of running the shop. It was a momentous turn of events.
At the time, he was mentored by the men who would become giants in the professional and commercial worlds: Cyril Duprey, AA Hodgkinson and one of the Kirpalanis. He was also helped by one Richard Brathwaite, a salesman who saw potential in the store and turned it away from the retail trade and into an agency business. In addition to business mentorship, Brathwaite also ensured the young man was tutored and educated.
This was in many ways the defining moment of the young Sabga’s life: all his further business ventures followed the pattern. They were all collaborative, involving expertise from a varied group of people; they were centered in a family enterprise; and they were all entrepreneurial in nature, never depending on or desiring more than the freedom to exist in an environment which allowed their operation.
Agency business rises
During the Second World War, the little store on Queen Street became the hub of a small import business, trading with companies in North America and the Far East via the Panama Canal. When the War ended, Anthony Sabga, then a young man of 18, handed over the store’s bulk of accumulated capital (a notable sum of $100,000 at the time) to his brothers, kept $6,000 for himself, and went to Europe, the US and Canada. He sought to become the agent for various companies. The Trinidad economy was still a colonial one, designed to export raw, primary products to the Metropole and import almost everything else.
The first trip was a failure. However, Sabga persisted and subsequent trips were more successful. By his early twenties he had a successful agency business trading in food, dry goods and household items. However, his major success would not come until 1948, when he returned to Syria accompanying a friend, George Moses, who was looking for a bride. There, at the home of Abdou Sabga, a distant relation who was also a successful merchant in Trinidad, he met Minerva Sabga, Abdou’s Trinidad-born daughter, who would become Anthony’s wife. They married in 1948, and their first child, Linda, was born in 1949. She was followed by Norman, Joann, David, Donna and Andrew. This was also the year Standard Distributors was registered.
Following his marriage, Sabga acquired additional agencies which would make him even more successful. These were the German brands Bosch and Heidelberg, which supplied home appliances and printing technology, and Frico powdered milk from Holland. He would set up 268 printer operations throughout the Caribbean in the years that followed, and establish distribution links throughout the region via his company, Standard Distributors.
As times changed and independence loomed, business also changed. In 1966 Sabga launched ANSA Industries, the first local appliance manufacturing company, which built refrigerators from the ground up, and assembled other items from components. It was a ground breaking enterprise, which won him the first Prime Minister’s Export Award in 1968.
In the 1970s, Sabga moved into retail, garment manufacturing and real estate development. This formed the basis for the ANSA Group. His signature achievement in this period was the reclamation of the land that is now Regent’s Park. The ANSA Group was successful, comprising Standard Distributors, Standard Equipment, Crown Industries, Farmhouse Industries, Bell Furniture and ANSA Construction, with Norman Investments and Standard Barbados as regional investments.
Birth of ANSA empire
Sabga’s greatest successes came later in life. In 1985, the once powerful McEnearney Alstons Group went into receivership and the ANSA Group was among the many businesses that bid for it.
Unlike the other bidders, however, ANSA was the only one willing to inject $30 million of fresh capital. This enabled the issue of new shares and would keep the businesses running. By contrast, other bidders were of the mind to break the company up and sell its components off.
When Sabga took over the McAL Group of Companies (which owned the T&T Guardian newspaper) in December 1986, the share price was $1. From 1987 to 2016, the share price climbed from 87 cents to $66.50, even after a stock split in the 90s, and profit went from $28 million to $1.16 billion.
In 1994, Sabga realised a lifelong dream of launching a bank and entered into a partnership with Robert Fleming Ltd, a London merchant bank. He relinquished his control of the ANSA McAL Group and focused his attention on what would, by 2004, become the ANSA Merchant Bank, a synergistic entity comprising the merchant bank and the insurance companies TATIL and TATIL Life.
More recently, Sabga also turned his attention to his legacy, ensuring substantial donations were made to The University of the West Indies, funding the ANSA McAL Psychological Research Centre. The schools of entrepreneurship and media studies are also in the process of being built. Among his greatest achievements was the establishment of the Anthony N Sabga Caribbean Awards for Excellence.
Established in 2005, the ANSA Caribbean Awards are the only regional privately funded recognition programme of its kind. It seeks out and rewards scientists, artists, entrepreneurs, and those who perform public and civic works. So far, it has awarded 31 scientists, environmentalists, musicians, writers and activists.
