Fusion Movie House Closes Says They Have No Money

In November 2018 an Imax Theatre and Multiplex opened in Nassau on Gladstone Road Hill which is believed at 123 feet to be the highest hill in New Providence.  It was a smash hit and like everything else in The Bahamas, there was an immediate rush for everyone to go there.  It was a pretty steep price tag.  A night at the movies for two could easily run you into 100 dollars. The question most people asked when they heard how much the five entrepreneurs spent on this project, they said some 40 million dollars, was how in God’s name were they ever going to make any money off that, or repay their loans?  Now the worst has come to pass. The Fusion owners have announced that with the Covid 19 regulations that Hubert Minnis has proclaimed, they have to close their doors and they have to lay off the 350 people working there.  And get this, they cannot pay the staff for the work already done and they certainly cannot pay going forward. So 350 people are out of work and have no money. They wrote this in a public letter which the press printed. They went further to say that they  had no support from the banks in the country so there was no one they could go to for funding. So now where does that put the employees? Well first of all the report is Fusion did not pay their national insurance contributions, so the employees are in a bit of trouble there. National Insurance has been wrongly refusing to pay employees in the past whose employers have not paid the contributions. The law is clear that NIB is to pay and recover from the employer. Then with the crisis of money in this country now, seems it is ultimately headed for a fire sale to some other buyer. The conventional wisdom on these capital intensive projects in small markets like this country is that it’s the third buyer who will eventually make some money off it.  What a pity though for all concerned? Carlos Foulkes, who runs the operation day to day, delivered the bad news.