I am one of thou­sands of mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ers of CIBC First­Caribbean, the Bar­ba­dos-based bank that was es­tab­lished in 2002 as a re­sult of the merg­er of the Caribbean op­er­a­tions of the British bank, Bar­clays, and its Cana­di­an coun­ter­part, CIBC.

When CIBC First­Caribbean was found­ed, Bar­clays and CIBC each owned 43.7 per cent of the merged en­ti­ty, which meant that the two banks com­bined owned 87.4 per cent of the Caribbean bank.

When the bank was set­up, it was called First­Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al Bank, which is the name by which it is list­ed on the stock ex­changes in Bar­ba­dos and T&T.

In March 2006, Bar­clays an­nounced that it want­ed to sell its 43.7 per cent stake in the bank and by De­cem­ber of that year, CIBC had pur­chased the Bar­clays share­hold­ing of 599,401,230 shares.

CIBC paid US$988,652,389 in cash for the Bar­clays shares, which val­ued the bank at US$1.62 per share, plus ac­crued but un­paid div­i­dends. CIBC was re­quired to make an of­fer to all re­main­ing share­hold­ers to ac­quire their share­hold­ing in the re­gion­al bank. The mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ers were of­fered the same US$1.62 a share that Bar­clays re­ceived.

As a re­sult of its pur­chase of the Bar­clays stake, and the of­fer to the mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ers, CIBC now owns 91.7 per cent of First­Caribbean, which was re­named CIBC First­Caribbean Bank in June 2011 “to be more close­ly aligned to the CIBC brand, while still main­tain­ing the First­Caribbean name and lo­cal iden­ti­ty,” ac­cord­ing to the news re­lease at the time.

In terms of its own­er­ship struc­ture, there­fore, CIBC First­Caribbean lies be­tween Sco­tia­bank, which owns 50.9 per cent of its T&T sub­sidiary, and RBC, which owns 100 per cent of RBC T&T.

The point is that with own­er­ship of 91.7 per cent, CIBC First­Caribbean is a ma­jor­i­ty Cana­di­an bank op­er­at­ing in the re­gion.

That is why when it was re­alised there is a prob­lem re­ceiv­ing div­i­dend cheques from CIBC First­Caribbean via the postal ser­vices of Bar­ba­dos and T&T, I wrote to, and called, the in­vestor re­la­tions em­ploy­ees of the Cana­di­an par­ent com­pa­ny on Mon­day morn­ing. A se­nior of­fi­cial at the Bar­ba­dos sub­sidiary was copied.

In the email, it was point­ed out that the pay­ment date of CIBC First­Caribbean’s first cal­en­dar 2023 div­i­dend was April 21, and that the cheque was re­ceived on June 1. It took 41 days for a let­ter to get from Bar­ba­dos to a share­hold­er’s home. Forty-one days!

And then, when the div­i­dend cheque was de­posit­ed, the com­mu­ni­ca­tion was it would take 15 work­ing days to clear be­cause CIBC First­Caribbean pays its div­i­dends in US dol­lars. That means, be­cause there are two pub­lic hol­i­days in June (to­day Cor­pus Christi and Labour Day, June 19), the ear­li­est the div­i­dend would be avail­able is June 28. That is 68 days!

The ba­sis of the en­quiry, of course, was to find out whether it would be pos­si­ble to get a di­rect de­posit of the div­i­dend pay­ment to a US-dol­lar ac­count by a wire.

I am hap­py to re­port that my sec­ond call to Toron­to was at 11.37 am on Mon­day and that by 3.11 Mon­day af­ter­noon, the as­sis­tant group cor­po­rate sec­re­tary of CIBC First­Caribbean called to say it would be pos­si­ble to re­ceive a di­rect de­posit.

She said all a CIBC First­Caribbean share­hold­er has to do is fill out a change-of-war­rant form in which the num­ber of their US-dol­lar bank ac­count is pro­vid­ed, have the form stamped by a bank man­ag­er or an at­tor­ney at law and then email the form to the bank’s reg­is­trar and trans­fer agent, the Bar­ba­dos Se­cu­ri­ties De­pos­i­to­ry.

The CIBC First­Caribbean of­fi­cial sug­gest­ed in the tele­phone call that the bank was look­ing to put mea­sures in place to en­sure that all of the bank’s non-Bar­ba­dos res­i­dent share­hold­ers would be ac­com­mo­dat­ed in the same way.

At a time when there is a great deal of news­pa­per com­men­tary, let­ters to the ed­i­tor and so­cial me­dia com­ments about the qual­i­ty of ser­vice be­ing pro­vid­ed by pub­lic and pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions in T&T, the cor­po­rate sec­re­tari­at of the Bar­ba­dos-head­quar­tered bank de­serves ful­some praise and con­grat­u­la­tions for its speedy and pos­i­tive re­sponse to an en­quiry from a share­hold­er.

It is hoped that CIBC First­Caribbean share­hold­ers who have been frus­trat­ed by the length of time that div­i­dend cheques take to reach them will take ad­van­tage of this op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Any­one in need of de­tails can write to an­tho­ny.wil­son@guardian.co.tt.

Should T&T’s as­sets

be au­dit­ed?

Last Thurs­day, in this pub­li­ca­tion, I re­port­ed on the long-stand­ing and on­go­ing dis­pute be­tween T&T’s Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment and its Board of In­land Rev­enue over whether the for­mer should have ac­cess to tax­pay­er in­for­ma­tion held by the lat­ter.

It is be­yond be­lief that what ap­pear to be a sim­ple and straight­for­ward is­sue should be un­re­solved af­ter 11 years of writ­ing and lob­by­ing by the pre­vi­ous and cur­rent Au­di­tor Gen­er­als.

The length of time it takes for the se­nior coun­sel re­tained by cur­rent At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Mr Regi­nald Ar­mour, to get a High Court judge to in­ter­pret the In­come Tax Act, the Au­dit and Ex­che­quer Act and T&T Con­sti­tu­tion will be not­ed. As re­port­ed last week, the 1976 Re­pub­li­can Con­sti­tu­tion MAN­DATES that the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al SHALL have ac­cess to all in­for­ma­tion per­ti­nent to the pub­lic ac­counts of T&T. How the Board of In­land Rev­enue could be ex­empt from that man­date is be­yond me.

The first few para­graphs of the 2022 Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Re­port sets out the fi­nan­cial state­ments au­dit­ed by the De­part­ment:

These state­ments:

(i) State­ments of the Trea­sury show­ing the fi­nan­cial po­si­tion of the coun­try as at Sep­tem­ber 30, 2022 which in­cludes the fol­low­ing:

• The Ex­che­quer Ac­count;

• The State­ment of Pub­lic Debt;

• The State­ment of Loans from Gen­er­al Rev­enue;

• The State­ment of Rev­enue show­ing sums es­ti­mat­ed to be re­ceived in­to the Ex­che­quer Ac­count and the sums ac­tu­al­ly so re­ceived in the pe­ri­od of ac­count;

• The State­ment of Ex­pen­di­ture show­ing the sums to be is­sued out of the Ex­che­quer Ac­count and the sums ac­tu­al­ly so is­sued in the pe­ri­od of ac­count;

• The State­ment of Loans or Cred­its Guar­an­teed by the State;

• The Cash Ba­sis Con­sol­i­dat­ed State­ment of As­sets and Li­a­bil­i­ties; and

• Such oth­er State­ments as Par­lia­ment may from time to time re­quire:

a) The State­ment of Loans from the Funds for Long-Term De­vel­op­ment.

(ii) Ap­pro­pri­a­tion Ac­counts of in­di­vid­ual Ac­count­ing Of­fi­cers for the year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2022;

(iii) State­ments of Re­ceipts and Dis­burse­ments of in­di­vid­ual Re­ceivers of Rev­enue for the year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2022;

(iv) The Fi­nan­cial State­ments of in­di­vid­ual Ad­min­is­ter­ing Of­fi­cers of Funds es­tab­lished un­der the pro­vi­sions of sec­tion 43 of the Act for the year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2022; and

(v) Fi­nan­cial State­ments of Ad­min­is­ter­ing Of­fi­cers of any trust or oth­er fund or ac­count not pro­vid­ed for in sec­tion 24 of the Act, if so di­rect­ed by the Trea­sury.

It strikes me that the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al re­views pub­lic debt, loans from gen­er­al rev­enue, loans and cred­its guar­an­teed by the State and loans for long-term de­vel­op­ment. That means there are au­dits of T&T li­a­bil­i­ties, but NOT its as­sets. Those as­sets should in­clude all of this coun­try’s State en­ter­pris­es, which I be­lieve are very con­sid­er­able but am un­able to quan­ti­fy be­cause they have nev­er been au­dit­ed.