On No­vem­ber 29, in the con­text of the saga of Wash­ing­ton’s pres­sure cam­paign on left­ist Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro’s gov­ern­ment (chav­is­mo’s prin­ci­pal torch­bear­er),US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is­sued a warn­ing that Venezue­lan air­space should be con­sid­ered closed—prompt­ing back­lash from Cara­cas and its al­lies. (In­deed, Wash­ing­ton’s stance to­wards Venezuela has re­ceived plen­ty of push­back from Cu­ba and oth­ers.)

Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL), the par­ent com­pa­ny of Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd, yes­ter­day named Yash­mid Kara­math as the com­pa­ny’s new chair­man.

In 1843, Charles Dick­ens pub­lished the clas­sic - A Christ­mas Car­ol. Since then, it has formed the ba­sis of many a Christ­mas con­cert. To­day it will form the ba­sis of an im­por­tant les­son in per­son­al fi­nance. This col­umn is based on a book ti­tled “The Fi­nan­cial Wis­dom of Ebenez­er Scrooge: 5 Prin­ci­ples To Trans­form Your Re­la­tion­ship with Mon­ey” by Ted Klontz, Brad Klontz and Rick Kahler.

I thank Mr. Fazir Khan, Pres­i­dent of the JCC, for his thought­ful en­gage­ment on the ques­tion of an­nu­al pro­cure­ment plan­ning un­der the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­poal of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act (PPDP­PA) in the Busi­ness Guardian of De­cem­ber 4, un­der the head­line ‘The OPRs ap­proach is prag­mat­ic.’

On Tues­day, Sagi­cor Fi­nan­cial Com­pa­ny (SFC) an­nounced the merg­er of its two com­pa­nies in the re­gion—Sagi­cor Group Ja­maica and Sagi­cor Life Inc—bring­ing to­geth­er a Ja­maican com­pa­ny with a T&T in­cor­po­rat­ed en­ti­ty un­der a new, sin­gle Caribbean hold­ing struc­ture.

The Caribbean is liv­ing through a mo­ment of ris­ing geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sion. As the Unit­ed States in­ten­si­fies pres­sure on the Maduro gov­ern­ment in Venezuela, the rip­ples reach Cari­com shores fast. None of these coun­tries chose this con­fronta­tion, yet each of them is forced to nav­i­gate its con­se­quences.

Ma­jor busi­ness groups and shop­pers are com­mend­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) for launch­ing Op­er­a­tion Fes­tive Shield, a high-vis­i­bil­i­ty crime plan that has seen an im­me­di­ate in­crease in pa­trols ahead of Christ­mas and Car­ni­val 2026.

Sagi­cor Fi­nan­cial Com­pa­ny Ltd (SFC) yes­ter­day an­nounced that two com­pa­nies it con­trols in the Caribbean are to merge, bring­ing Sagi­cor Group Ja­maica and Sagi­cor Life Inc un­der a sin­gle Caribbean hold­ing struc­ture.

The Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) yes­ter­day an­nounced the re­lease of the con­sumer price in­dex (CPI) for No­vem­ber 2025, high­light­ing a mod­est in­crease in in­fla­tion and no­table shifts across sev­er­al cat­e­gories of con­sumer spend­ing.

Gov­ern­ment achieved its ob­jec­tive yes­ter­day of elect­ing sev­en of its nom­i­nees to serve as di­rec­tors on the board of Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL), the largest fi­nan­cial ser­vices com­pa­ny in the Caribbean re­gion.

Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo is in Pana­ma City to at­tend meet­ings of the board of di­rec­tors and the XLVI Au­dit Com­mit­tee of CAF – De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, which be­gan yes­ter­day and con­tin­ues to­day.

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Karen Nunez-Tesheira says last week’s ter­mi­na­tion of Navin Dook­er­an as CEO of the Ex­port-Im­port Bank of T&T (Ex­im­bank) may sig­nal the im­pend­ing end to con­ces­sion­al forex fi­nanc­ing for non-ex­port sec­tors, un­der­scor­ing the need for strate­gic ad­just­ments in eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy.