The Bank of Guyana (BoG) has rejected Republic Bank’s application for the acquisition of ScotiaBank while citing a number of concerns.
Minister of Finance Winston Jordan told Stabroek News last evening that Cabinet was alerted to letters that BoG Governor Dr Gobind Ganga would have dispatched to the Trinidad-headquartered Republic Bank and Scotiabank “and also the letter that was written to me, indicating that having done their examination and taking all the circumstances into consideration that they [BoG] could not approve the application.”
“This was discussed at Cabinet this morning and Cabinet concurred with the Governor’s pronouncement and they agreed that the reasons given were important reasons and the critical one being concentration, the risks involved and so on, AML/CFT [Anti-Money Laundering and Combatting the Financing of Terrorism] considerations, the lack of supervisory capacity by the bank itself; they are now building that capacity and so on. So when you take all of that into consideration, we did not feel that this application would be in Guyana’s best interest,” he added.
Jordan said that while the