Keith Collister, Business Writer

Paul Chen Young on the cover of his book: 'The Entrepreneurial Journey in Jamaica'. - File

Paul Chen Young & Company (PCY), the security firm formed more than two decades ago by former owner, Dr. Paul Chen Young, has changed its name in what current owner, Hugh Croskery, says is a move to rebrand and give the company 'a fresh start'.

The company, since September, has been renamed Stock and Securities Limited, but it is only since this week that this has been broadly advertised to potential customers.

"When the company was founded in 1977, Dr. Paul Chen Young, was the head. Now Dr. Chen Young is no longer part of the company," Croskery said.

It was in part to reflect this fact that the name, five years after Croskery assumed control, has been changed.

Chen Young, an economist, who once worked at the World Bank, was a pioneer in Jamaican banking and development of the capital market.

He was also among their most sensational losers.

In 1981 Chen Young launched Eagle Merchant Bank, which not only became the centrepiece of his Eagle network of financial companies, but was catalyst for a foray by Jamaican entrepreneurs into banks, insurance companies and other finance-related firms.

But when Jamaica's financial sector collapsed in the late 1990s, Eagle was among the companies that fell the hardest - with a $14 billion financing gap which the Government had to cover.

Chen Young, who was subject to a series of lawsuits, has always blamed inappropriate government policies for the meltdown, views he developed in a book chroniclling the events of the 1990s, called The Entrepreneurial Journey in Jamaica: When Policies Derail. But the brokerage house, which was not part of the Eagle Group, emerged from the fiasco unscathed.

Croskery, initially seen as a Chen Young loyalist, moved to the head of the company in the aftermath of Eagle's trouble when former managing director, Brian Pond, was forced out, having attempted to lead a management take-over of the firm. Pond apparently felt that PCY was being hurt in the market by its association with Chen Young.

Croskery explained this week that since July 2001, Paul Chen Young has had nothing to do with PCY, with the company fully owned by its management, who included well-known broker, Phillip Harvey-Lewis, who is general manager for investments. Among other key players in the company is Croskery's son, Hugh, a former bond trader at NCB Capital Markets, who is the deputy general manager for sales and marketing.

Stocks and Securities, Croskery said, has equity capital of over $100 million.

- business@gleanerjm.com