PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

First Cit­i­zens planned pur­chase of Sco­tia­bank’s Guyana op­er­a­tions has failed.

On Thurs­day, the Bank put out a le­gal no­tice con­firm­ing the deal was off. The deal was ini­tial­ly an­nounced in March last year.

The no­tice stat­ed, “The Pur­chase and Sale Agree­ment be­tween First Cit­i­zens Bank Lim­it­ed and the Bank of No­va Sco­tia (Sco­tia­bank) for the sale of Sco­tia­bank’s re­tail op­er­a­tions in Guyana ex­pired and the agree­ment has been ter­mi­nat­ed in ac­cor­dance with its terms.”

The state­ment con­tin­ued, “First Cit­i­zens re­mains re­solved to ad­vance our ge­o­graph­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion strate­gies. These ef­forts will in­crease our share­hold­er val­ue by ac­tive pro­gres­sion of all strate­gic op­tions to ex­pand our core com­mer­cial bank­ing and oth­er lines of busi­ness in­to new mar­kets and ter­ri­to­ries while we con­tin­ue to de­liv­er dig­i­tal prod­ucts, chan­nels and ser­vices to the mar­kets that we serve.”

It is not the first time a Trinidad and To­ba­go Bank has found dif­fi­cul­ty clos­ing such a deal, in 2019 the Bank of Guyana blocked the sale of Sco­tia­bank Guyana’s as­sets to Re­pub­lic Bank.

There were ear­ly in­di­ca­tions that this deal was not favoured as both Guyana’s Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and the Bank of Guyana crit­i­cised the an­nounce­ment of the sale by Sco­tia­bank last year.

Guyana’s Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dr Ash­ni Singh had said Sco­tia­bank’s an­nounce­ment  was “pre­ma­ture and in­ap­pro­pri­ate” as he point­ed  out that sec­tion 12 of the coun­try’s Fi­nan­cial In­sti­tu­tions Act stat­ed “no fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion may trans­fer the en­tire or a sub­stan­tial part of its op­er­a­tions with­out pri­or ap­proval from the Bank of Guyana.”

The min­is­ter said then, “Con­sid­er­ing that the laws of Guyana re­quire this process, we con­sid­er it pre­ma­ture to an­nounce a trans­ac­tion of this na­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en that the reg­u­la­to­ry process to con­sid­er the re­quest for any such trans­ac­tion is yet to be ini­ti­at­ed, much less to be con­clud­ed.”

The Bank of Guyana in re­sponse to Sco­tia’s an­nounce­ment of the deal, made it known that FCB “en­tered the said agree­ment with­out in­form­ing the BOG.”

The BOG al­so stat­ed First Cit­i­zens’ Bank did not have a li­cence to op­er­ate in Guyana.

“FCB has not sub­mit­ted an ap­pli­ca­tion, in keep­ing with the re­quire­ments of the Fi­nan­cial In­sti­tu­tions Act 1995 (FIA), to the BOG to ac­quire con­trol of a bank (BNS) op­er­at­ing in Guyana,” the BOG said in a state­ment af­ter the deal was an­nounced in March 2021.

CLICK FOR MORE BUSI­NESS NEWS