Hop­ing to fol­low on from its suc­cess on the Ja­maican Stock Ex­change, two Fri­days ago AS Bry­den & Sons Hold­ings (AS­BH) was of­fi­cial­ly list­ed on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change (TTSE).

At the Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd (NEL) an­nu­al meet­ing yes­ter­day, a con­cerned share­hold­er drilled the out­go­ing chair, In­grid Lash­ley, with sev­er­al point­ed ques­tions con­cern­ing the gov­er­nance of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.  

CIBC Caribbean Bank yes­ter­day re­port­ed net in­come of US$114.8 mil­lion for the nine months end­ed Ju­ly 31, 2025, a 47.3 per cent de­cline com­pared with $217.7 mil­lion for the same pe­ri­od last year.

Lo­cal dis­trib­u­tor AS Bry­den & Sons Hold­ings (AS­BH) has pur­chased a 50 per cent in­ter­est in Bar­ba­di­an im­porter and dis­trib­u­tor, Arm­strong Agen­cies Ltd (AAL).

For­eign ex­change spend­ing via cred­it card us­age has in­creased by over US$1.5 bil­lion dol­lars in the past decade.

Last month, I wrote on “When Di­rec­tors must say no” cit­ing the SporTT v Padding­ton judg­ment, where Jus­tice Ricky Rahim re­mind­ed us that “boards of state en­ter­pris­es are not rub­ber stamps.” That case, which re­sult­ed in di­rec­tors be­ing held li­able for their fail­ure to scru­ti­nise min­is­te­r­i­al in­struc­tions sig­nalled what should be the end of an era of pas­sive or po­lit­i­cal­ly-syco­phan­tic board­rooms.

There is no dis­pute that the T&T econ­o­my is in a state of cri­sis, with the coun­try’s net for­eign re­serves be­ing de­plet­ed at an alarm­ing pace, a dys­func­tion­al for­eign ex­change regime, an over­val­ued ex­change rate, and a 2025 bud­get that is in deep deficit and is be­ing fund­ed by bor­row­ings and draw­downs from T&T’s Her­itage Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund.

Cus­tomers of ship­ping com­pa­ny Trin­ba­go Ex­press con­tin­ue to ex­press frus­tra­tion and anx­i­ety over long-de­layed ship­ments and a lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the com­pa­ny’s lead­er­ship.

Im­proved da­ta col­lec­tion and in­formed car­bon pric­ing are the keys to re­duc­ing the po­ten­tial im­pact of the Car­bon Bor­der Ad­just­ment Mech­a­nisms in the UK, EU, and pos­si­bly even the Unit­ed States.

As the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion pre­pares to de­liv­er its first na­tion­al bud­get, key busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tions like the T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries (TTC­SI) and Am­cham T&T have pre­sent­ed a uni­fied vi­sion for a di­ver­si­fied and re­silient econ­o­my.

Hy­dro­car­bons have been the main­stay of the T&T econ­o­my, con­tribut­ing about 36 per cent of GDP and about 80 per cent of ex­ports since 2020. Con­tin­ued re­liance on this sec­tor, how­ev­er, pos­es a threat, giv­en glob­al volatil­i­ty of en­er­gy mar­kets, de­clin­ing lo­cal pro­duc­tion and in­creased em­pha­sis on al­ter­na­tive en­er­gy. While the con­tri­bu­tion by the non-en­er­gy sec­tor to GDP has trend­ed up­wards, di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion is nec­es­sary to re­duce the de­pen­dence on hy­dro­car­bons and to po­si­tion the coun­try to achieve long-term re­silience and glob­al com­pet­i­tive­ness.

Bet­ter known as a com­mer­cial bank, Sco­tia’s in­sur­ance of­fer­ing is be­com­ing an emerg­ing force in T&T’s fi­nan­cial sec­tor.