Nadaleen Singh

For­mer CIBC First­Caribbean bank ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Michael Kevin Man­soor was a "pos­i­tive force" in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly, says Cather­ine Ku­mar, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce. Man­soor, who served as ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of CIBC First­Caribbean from its in­cep­tion in Oc­to­ber of 2002 to his re­tire­ment on De­cem­ber 31, 2013, af­ter which he con­tin­ued to serve on the com­pa­ny's board of di­rec­tors, passed away yes­ter­day.On Oc­to­ber 17, the T&T Cham­ber in­duct­ed the char­tered ac­coun­tant and banker in­to its Hall of Fame. Via a text mes­sage yes­ter­day, Ku­mar said she vis­it­ed him at his home fol­low­ing his in­duc­tion."The Cham­ber re­cent­ly in­duct­ed him in­to its Busi­ness Hall of Fame and we were so hap­py that we were able to do this while he was still alive, and was ful­ly aware of his nom­i­na­tion. While he was not able to at­tend the func­tion, his daugh­ter Na­tal­ie ac­cept­ed the award on his be­half and I was able to vis­it there­after, and speak about the award. The Cham­ber will cer­tain­ly mourn the loss of a great busi­ness icon and a man of the high­est in­tegri­ty."

Re­mem­ber­ing her first in­ter­ac­tion with him, Ku­mar said: "Michael was al­ready a part­ner at (ac­count­ing firm) Pan­nell Fitz­patrick when I joined and got to know him. He was young, but I to­tal­ly looked up to him and re­spect­ed his knowl­edge and cer­tain­ly used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to gain from his ex­pe­ri­ence."First Cit­i­zens Group chief ex­ec­u­tive Lar­ry Nath de­scribed Man­soor, a for­mer part­ner at Ernst and Young, as "an as­tute pro­fes­sion­al.""It is in­deed an ho­n­our and priv­i­lege to have worked with Mike. I re­gard him as an as­tute pro­fes­sion­al who was com­mit­ted to the de­vel­op­ment of the Caribbean fi­nan­cial ser­vices in­dus­try, and had a tremen­dous ca­pac­i­ty for work, but al­ways made time to men­tor and pro­vide sound coun­sel. Nath added: "Mike al­ways strove to be the best that he could–fam­i­ly man, con­sci­en­tious cit­i­zen, high­ly re­gard­ed banker, boss and coach. He is an in­spi­ra­tion to us all and will be missed."

In a state­ment on its Web site, CIBC First­Caribbean's chief ex­ec­u­tive Rik Parkhill said Man­soor was one in a mil­lion."We can nev­er re­place a man of Mike's stature. When the his­to­ry of this in­sti­tu­tion is writ­ten, in fact, as the his­to­ry of this re­gion con­tin­ues to be record­ed, Mike Man­soor's name will cer­tain­ly fea­ture as one of the builders of the bank­ing in­dus­try, one of the schol­ars of the re­gion, and one of the great or­a­tors to ad­dress the Sen­ate of the Re­pub­lic of T&T."Parkhill said Man­soor will be re­mem­bered as a "great friend.""Mike made many friends across the re­gion at all lev­els of our so­ci­ety, chiefly among our em­ploy­ees."

CIBC First­Caribbean pres­i­dent Vic­tor Dodig added: "Mike was in­stru­men­tal in chart­ing the course for CIBC First­Caribbean. Of par­tic­u­lar note is the role he played in bring­ing CIBC and Bar­clays to­geth­er more than a decade ago to com­bine our op­er­a­tions in the re­gion to be­come First­Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al Bank. "Mike was a man of tremen­dous char­ac­ter. He was a role mod­el, a leader and a gen­tle­man. His wise coun­sel and sin­cere friend­ship to CIBC and its Caribbean op­er­a­tions will be great­ly missed."In 1990, Man­soor be­came a di­rec­tor and chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer of the ANSA McAL Group. The 1990 at­tempt­ed coup came with­in days of Man­soor join­ing the con­glom­er­ate. Like many oth­er busi­ness­es in the cap­i­tal, ANSA McAL suf­fered dev­as­tat­ing loss­es from the loot­ing and ar­son at­tacks. In 1993, Man­soor be­came Group man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of ANSA McAL. Dur­ing the eight years there, his en­er­gies were con­sumed by a mix of chal­lenges as he sta­bilised, re­built and ex­pand­ed the con­glom­er­ate, while car­ry­ing sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic sec­tor and civic re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

Man­soor served as an in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor dur­ing the third and four Re­pub­li­can Par­lia­ments, from 1987 to 1995. Dur­ing his tenure in the Sen­ate, he was of­ten in­volved in leg­is­la­tion re­lat­ed to eco­nom­ic, fi­nance and gen­er­al busi­ness de­vel­op­ment. In 1966, he was award­ed the Open Is­land Schol­ar­ship in lan­guages for be­ing the top stu­dent in Trinidad. He then stud­ied in Cana­da, re­ceiv­ing the char­tered ac­coun­tant des­ig­na­tion in 1972, and an MBA from the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­ern On­tario in 1974, and was placed on the dean's ho­n­our list. Man­soor al­so served as the chair­man of the Cam­pus Coun­cil of the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). In 2012, the UWI con­ferred on him the de­gree of hon­orary Doc­tor of Laws.

Bankers pay trib­ute

Dar­ryl White, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, RBC Roy­al Bank Ltd, has hailed the late Michael Man­soor as a lead­ing fig­ure in the bank­ing sec­tor lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly."A Caribbean banker, Mr Man­soor led CIBC First­Caribbean through a pe­ri­od of change and trans­for­ma­tion at a time when sound lead­er­ship was crit­i­cal for any glob­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion to be sus­tain­able.""His daugh­ter, Na­tal­ie, who is the head, as­set man­age­ment, RBC, is a col­league with whom I have had the plea­sure of work­ing with for sev­er­al years."Suresh Sookoo, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, RBC Caribbean bank­ing, said, "Mr Michael Man­soor has dis­tin­guished him­self as a se­nior ex­ec­u­tive and leader in the fi­nan­cial sec­tor in T&T and the Caribbean. As the ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of CIBC First­Caribbean, Michael worked tire­less­ly to es­tab­lish that brand in the re­gion."