NADALEEN SINGH

Ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion (UTC) Mar­lon Hold­er is the new chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the CL Fi­nan­cial Group of com­pa­nies, as well as chair­man of Cli­co.

Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Ewart Williams says the ap­point­ment comes at "a good time." "I would like to con­grat­u­late Mar­lon Hold­er as he as­sumes the new po­si­tion as chair­man of Cli­co," he said. "It puts him at the cen­tre of our strat­e­gy de­signed to en­sure max­i­mum re­cov­ery of pol­i­cy­hold­ers' funds in the fastest pos­si­ble time and the re­struc­tur­ing of Cli­co in­to a trans­formed, ef­fi­cient and more tra­di­tion­al in­sur­ance com­pa­ny," Williams said, dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at the Cen­tral Bank in Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day. Chair­man of CL Fi­nan­cial Dr Shafeek Sul­tan-Khan said: "I am pleased, hap­py and in fact, I think it's ap­pro­pri­ate at this time, to an­nounce that the board of di­rec­tors of CL Fi­nan­cial has al­so ap­point­ed Mr Mar­lon Hold­er as the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the CL Fi­nan­cial group and as man­ag­ing di­rec­tor," Sul­tan-Khan said. Hold­er re­places Dr Eu­ric Bobb. Williams, com­ment­ing on Bobb's re­tire­ment, said he did not want Bobb to re­tire. "While I have no choice but to ac­cept Eu­ric's res­ig­na­tion, I must con­cede that I do this with tremen­dous re­gret," Williams said. "His re­spon­si­bil­i­ties have turned out to be much broad­er and far more de­mand­ing than ei­ther he or I had en­vis­aged. "I will con­tin­ue to use Eu­ric as a sound­ing board and as a source of ad­vice for all mat­ters that have to do with CLF."

Hold­er: I'm not a Lawrence Duprey

Re­spond­ing to his crit­ics that he would be likened to for­mer CL Fi­nan­cial chair­man Lawrence Duprey, Hold­er as­sured he would not be that way. "I am not a Lawrence Duprey, I don't look like him–that's the big dif­fer­ence there," he said. "My his­to­ry, I have grown up in risk man­age­ment and I have gone in­to busi­ness. "The dif­fer­ence be­tween me and him is that I would be talk­ing to you a lit­tle more of­ten." Com­ment­ing on his ap­point­ment, Hold­er said he com­piled some sug­ges­tions and planned to present it to the var­i­ous boards be­fore mak­ing any an­nounce­ments about his plans for the com­pa­nies. "I would have a press con­fer­ence to talk about what I see; how we see our­selves go­ing short, medi­um and long-term; what are the is­sues we have to face so the pub­lic gets a feel of what's hap­pen­ing; and hope­ful­ly that would re­build the con­fi­dence back in­to CL Fi­nan­cial," Hold­er said.

Asked about the im­pact his new ap­point­ment would have on UTC, Hold­er said there would not be any dras­tic change in UTC since the cor­po­ra­tion had a suc­ces­sor­ship pro­gramme in place, where four peo­ple would be "groomed" to han­dle his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in UTC. Asked if he thought in­vestor con­fi­dence would wane in UTC, he said: "When you look around to what is hap­pen­ing in the mar­ket, UTC con­tin­ues to pay com­pet­i­tive re­turns and pro­vides great ser­vice at a low cost."