The First Cit­i­zens Group yes­ter­day clar­i­fied the dif­fer­ence be­tween First Cit­i­zens Hold­ings (FCH) and First Cit­i­zens Group Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings (FCGFH), main­tain­ing that FCH is a pri­vate com­pa­ny ful­ly owned by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance (Cor­po­ra­tion Sole), which holds the State’s 60.11 per cent share­hold­ing in FCGFH, the pub­licly list­ed com­pa­ny on the T&T Stock Ex­change.

The First Cit­i­zens Group is­sued a clar­i­fy­ing state­ment, pub­lished on this page, fol­low­ing a Dai­ly Ex­press re­port yes­ter­day that con­fused FCH, the pri­vate hold­ing com­pa­ny, with FCGFH, a pub­lic com­pa­ny that is “the fi­nan­cial hold­ing com­pa­ny for the First Cit­i­zens Group, reg­u­lat­ed by the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go and li­censed pur­suant to the Fi­nan­cial In­sti­tu­tions Act.”

On Wednes­day, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo pre­sent­ed in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment to eight new di­rec­tors of First Cit­i­zens Hold­ings, in­clud­ing the com­pa­ny’s new chair­man, at­tor­ney Shankar Bidaisee. The board of FCGFH, which is chaired by at­tor­ney An­tho­ny Smart, re­mains un­changed.

The Dai­ly Ex­press al­so re­port­ed in­cor­rect­ly yes­ter­day that the Gov­ern­ment re­moved First Cit­i­zens Group CEO, Karen Dar­basie, when the First Cit­i­zens Group, in a memo to its staff last Fri­day, stat­ed that Dar­basie pro­ceed­ed on ap­proved va­ca­tion leave from Au­gust 21 and will re­tire ef­fec­tive Oc­to­ber 21.

In its no­tice yes­ter­day, the First Cit­i­zens Group con­firmed that “a spe­cial meet­ing of the share­hold­ers of First Cit­i­zens Group Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings will be con­vened at the ap­point­ed time, which would al­low the share­hold­ers to con­sid­er and elect di­rec­tors of FCGFH.”

Some of the di­rec­tors on the board of FCH are like­ly to be repli­cat­ed on the board of FCGFH, if the Gov­ern­ment us­es the cur­rent board arrange­ments as a guide. First Cit­i­zens Group chair­man An­tho­ny Smart, at­tor­ney Courte­nay Williams and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, Jay­selle Mc­Far­lane, sit on both boards, ac­cord­ing to the bank’s 2024 an­nu­al re­port.

Bidaisee wants eq­ui­table ac­cess to forex

New­ly ap­point­ed chair­man of First Cit­i­zens Hold­ings Ltd, Shankar Bidaisee, is vow­ing to bring equal ac­cess to for­eign ex­change via the group’s bank.

In a state­ment sent to the Guardian af­ter his ap­point­ment on Wednes­day, Bidaisee said it was im­por­tant to ad­dress the is­sue of for­eign ex­change al­lo­ca­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en its im­por­tance to small busi­ness­es.

He said, “I in­tend to in­stil a ze­ro-tol­er­ance pol­i­cy to­wards un­equal treat­ment and cor­rup­tion, to en­sure eq­ui­table ac­cess to FCB ser­vices, in­clud­ing, most im­por­tant­ly, for­eign ex­change, so that the pub­lic, in­clud­ing small busi­ness­es, which re­al­ly form the back­bone of the econ­o­my, can have ac­cess to this need­ed for­eign ex­change.”

Bidaisee al­so shared his goals as the new­ly in­stalled chair­man of the bank.

He said, “Well, as chair­man, my core vi­sion is to in­stil greater pub­lic sec­tor con­fi­dence in the op­er­a­tions of the bank and to con­duct a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the group’s op­er­a­tions, to prompt­ly ad­dress wastage and, of course, to max­imise prof­it with­in, of course, a frame­work of good cor­po­rate gov­er­nance.”

In its fi­nan­cial re­port for the nine months end­ed June 30, 2025, the First Cit­i­zens Group re­port­ed af­ter-tax prof­it $719.6 mil­lion, which was an im­prove­ment of 5.1 per cent com­pared to its prof­its for the same pe­ri­od a year ear­li­er.

The chair­man said he would al­so be look­ing in­to the over­all cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence, “from in­di­vid­u­als to medi­um to large busi­ness­es, to give the bank a com­pet­i­tive edge over oth­er fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.”

--Pe­ter Christo­pher