The chair­man of the DDL Group of Com­pa­nies, Ko­mal Sama­roo, says De­mer­ara Bank, has opened a sub­sidiary in St Lu­cia tak­ing ad­van­tage of leg­is­la­tion in that Caribbean coun­try al­low­ing fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions to fo­cus on in­vest­ment bank­ing.

“We do have a sub­sidiary in St Lu­cia but that is for the pur­pose of in­vest­ment and look­ing at op­por­tu­ni­ties in the re­gion so it is at the very be­gin­ning stage of widen­ing the foot­print of the bank,” Sama­roo told the on­line pub­li­ca­tion De­mer­ara Waves On­line News.

He said the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion, though small, was hold­ing “some in­vest­ments re­gion­al­ly and glob­al­ly” and was ex­plor­ing op­tions such as cor­po­rate lend­ing.

Sama­roo said that the 32-year old fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion would be search­ing for in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties, and had not reached the stage of plan­ning a branch “as yet” in St Lu­cia.

“We’re es­tab­lish­ing a pres­ence and we’re man­ag­ing some in­vest­ments through that branch for the wider Caribbean but St Lu­cia is the fo­cal point; it’s where every­thing will be based,” he said.

The group chair­man said St Lu­cia’s laws “al­low for this kind of op­er­a­tion” and so the cor­po­rate de­ci­sion mak­ers want­ed to widen the base of the bank out­side Guyana, “not to have it in one lo­ca­tion but to start look­ing at the wider re­gion.”

Known as DB St Lu­cia In­cor­po­rat­ed, the in­vest­ment sub­sidiary has al­ready re­ceived reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval from the St Kitts-based East­ern Caribbean Cen­tral Bank (EC­CB),” he said, adding “it’s in­cor­po­rat­ed and it’s hold­ing some in­vest­ments that the bank has”.

Sama­roo said that, in con­trast to Guyana, St Lu­cia “es­pe­cial­ly cre­at­ed this kind of reg­u­la­tion that al­lows for in­vest­ment com­pa­nies to be based there.

“We be­lieve that Guyanese com­pa­nies should not con­fine their thought process to Guyana but should look out­side and the first step in the re­gion to see how we can start po­si­tion­ing our­selves to go af­ter op­por­tu­ni­ties in the re­gion,” he said.

De­mer­ara Bank was in­cor­po­rat­ed in Jan­u­ary, 1992 and de­clared open in 1994. (CMC)