PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The East­ern Caribbean Cen­tral Bank (EC­CB) has ap­proved the sale of Roy­al Bank of Cana­da in the ter­ri­to­ries of the East­ern Caribbean.

On Fri­day, Gov­er­nor Tim­o­thy An­toine of the East­ern Caribbean Cen­tral Bank con­firmed that RBC as­sets will be sold to a con­sor­tium of in­dige­nous banks with­in the East­ern Caribbean Cur­ren­cy Union (EC­CU) ju­ris­dic­tion, viz. 1st Na­tion­al Bank (St. Lu­cia), An­tigua Com­mer­cial Bank, Na­tion­al Bank of Do­mini­ca, Bank of Montser­rat, and Bank of Nevis. The sale in­cludes op­er­a­tions in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, the Com­mon­wealth of Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, Montser­rat, Saint Lu­cia, St. Kitts and Nevis, and St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

Gov­er­nor An­toine made the an­nounce­ment of the ap­proval at a press brief­ing fol­low­ing the 98th Meet­ing of the EC­CU Mon­e­tary Coun­cil on Fri­day at EC­CB head­quar­ters in Bas­seterre, St. Kitts and Nevis.

He said, "On the ques­tion of RBC, the EC­CB has ap­proved the ap­pli­ca­tion for the sale of the RBC op­er­a­tions in the East­ern Caribbean Cur­ren­cy Union to a con­sor­tium of in­dige­nous or na­tion­al banks. That process is now mov­ing for­ward, and an an­nounce­ment will be made in due course. But the idea is to con­clude that trans­ac­tion not too long from now. So that is mov­ing for­ward. In fact, I can tell you on­ly yes­ter­day [on Thurs­day, 11 Feb­ru­ary 2021] we sub­mit­ted to the fi­nance min­is­ters a vest­ing or­der or vest­ing or­ders, which is an im­por­tant le­gal in­stru­ment to trans­fer as­sets from one bank or bank­ing en­ti­ty to an­oth­er. So that process is mov­ing for­ward."

The sale of RBC to Caribbean banks fol­lows the sim­i­lar ac­qui­si­tions of Cana­di­an based banks by Caribbean en­ti­ties. In 2019, much of Bank of No­va Sco­tia's stake in the East­ern Caribbean was sold to Trinidad and To­ba­go's Re­pub­lic Bank. In Oc­to­ber last year, BNS de­clared that it had reached an arrange­ment for the sale of its ser­vices in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da to the East­ern Caribbean Amal­ga­mat­ed Bank Lim­it­ed (ECAB). That set­tle­ment is sub­ject to reg­u­la­to­ry per­mis­sions and oth­er con­ven­tion­al clos­ing re­quire­ments.

The Gov­er­nor al­so ad­dressed the re­cent de­ci­sion by the Cana­di­an Im­pe­r­i­al Bank of Com­merce (CIBC) that a ma­jor­i­ty stake in First Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al Bank Lim­it­ed (FCIB) would not be sold af­ter a bid was re­ject­ed by Caribbean reg­u­la­tors.

“In terms of the sale of CIBC, I would sim­ply con­firm that reg­u­la­tors across the re­gion con­sid­ered it. Cen­tral Bank of Bar­ba­dos is the lead reg­u­la­tor, based on the ju­ris­dic­tion of CIBC FCIB. But all reg­u­la­tors, in­clud­ing the EC­CB, were in­volved in that dis­cus­sion, and came to that de­ci­sion which has been con­veyed and you are cor­rect the ap­pli­ca­tion was de­nied.”