Karen Dar­basie, coun­try trea­sur­er at Citibank (T&T) Ltd, is set to take up the po­si­tion of CEO at First Cit­i­zens, fill­ing a post that has been va­cant since the sud­den res­ig­na­tion of Lar­ry Nath last De­cem­ber.

Dar­basie was at one time man­ag­ing di­rec­tor at Citibank (T&T) and was re­spon­si­ble for man­ag­ing the as­set and li­a­bil­i­ty po­si­tions of the bank in Trinidad, Bar­ba­dos and Ba­hamas, as well as man­ag­ing FX trad­ing po­si­tions and se­cu­ri­ties dis­tri­b­u­tion in the three coun­tries. Pri­or to that, she was the Cap­i­tal Mar­kets Head at Citi­corp Mer­chant Bank and the Re­la­tion­ship Man­ag­er for the Gov­ern­ment and Pub­lic Sec­tor at Citibank (T&T).

Dar­basie re­ceived her BSc (Hons) in Elec­tri­cal En­gi­neer­ing in 1985 from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies; an MSc (Dist) in Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and In­for­ma­tion Sys­tems in 1987 from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Es­sex; and an MBA (Dist) in 1991 from the Uni­ver­si­ty of War­wick.Since Nath's res­ig­na­tion, First Cit­i­zens' chair­man An­tho­ny Smart had been func­tion­ing as ex­ec­u­tive chair­man ad­vised by re­tired Citibank ex­ec­u­tive Steve Bideshi.

Dar­basie's ap­point­ment, which has not yet been of­fi­cial­ly an­nounced by the bank, fol­lows the ap­point­ment in Jan­u­ary of Ja­son Julien, for­mer gen­er­al man­ag­er of First Cit­i­zens In­vest­ment Ser­vices (FCIS), as deputy chief ex­ec­u­tive of bank op­er­a­tions.In the po­si­tion of CEO, Dar­basie will be step­ping in­to lead­er­ship of a bank that is still re­cov­er­ing from the con­tro­ver­sy that erupt­ed just months af­ter its his­toric ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing in 2013. Val­ued at $1.1 bil­lion, it was the largest sin­gle IPO in the his­to­ry of the T&T Stock Ex­change.

How­ev­er, with­in months the IPO came un­der scruti­ny af­ter it was dis­cov­ered that Phillip Ra­haman, the bank's for­mer chief risk of­fi­cer, had pur­chased 659,588 shares and with­in four months had sold 634,588 of those shares.Ra­haman was sub­se­quent­ly fired and the con­tro­ver­sy claimed oth­er ca­su­al­ties, in­clud­ing then chair­man Nyree Al­fon­so and sev­er­al mem­bers of the board of di­rec­tors.The IPO con­tro­ver­sy is still be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion (SEC).There is no word yet on when Dar­basie will take up du­ties.