Trinidad’s Republic Bank yesterday expressed disappointment at a decision by the Bank of Guyana (BoG) to deny its bid to acquire Scotiabank here.
In a statement yesterday, President and CEO of Republic Financial Holdings Limited (RFHL), Nigel Baptiste, said, “While this development is disappointing, we do not dwell on disappointment. As a group, we remain fully engaged and committed to supporting the nation of Guyana through our operations there, as well as toward ensuring the success of all activities for which we have received the requisite regulatory approvals, under the proposed BNS acquisition. We appreciate the Bank of Guyana’s acknowledgement of the value of our longstanding role in the development of Guyana’s financial landscape and our continued contribution to the financial sector”.
On Tuesday, Minister of Finance Winston Jordan told Stabroek News 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 decision to sell is up to Scotia, government hopes that it might rethink its position as the Bank of Baroda has done. “We hope that Scotia can use this opportunity to… because you know Baroda has cancelled their exit, so to speak, so maybe Scotia, in the context of oil and gas and the speed at which that is being ramped up, maybe they will see the light perhaps and decide to stay. But in the event they don’t, I hope they take due consideration that Guyana is a sovereign country and we ought to be treated in that manner,” Jordan said.
