The NCB Fi­nan­cial Group (NCBFG) an­nounced yeste­day that its chair­man and ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er, Michael Lee-Chin, in­di­cat­ed he is tak­ing a leave of ab­sence ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly “to al­low him to fo­cus on cer­tain press­ing busi­ness and per­son­al mat­ters.”

In a no­tice on the web­site of the Ja­maica Stock Ex­change, NCBFG said Lee-Chin’s leave of ab­sence would im­pact the boards of NCBFG, its 100 per cent owned sub­sidiary, Na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Bank Ja­maica (NCBJ) and Guardian Hold­ings Ltd (GHL), which is owned 61.77 per cent by NCBFG.

Lee-Chin is chair­man of NCBFG and serves as di­rec­tor on the boards of NCBJ and GHL, the re­gion­al fi­nan­cial ser­vices com­pa­ny that is head­quar­tered in West­moor­ings.

In the no­tice, NCBFG said Lee-Chin “an­tic­i­pates” that the cer­tain press­ing busi­ness and per­son­al mat­ters would take ap­prox­i­mate­ly three months.

News of Lee-Chin pro­ceed­ing on leave of ab­sence ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly fol­lows months of news re­ports that the Ja­maica-born busi­ness­man was dis­pos­ing of his as­sets.

Ear­li­er this month, the on­line pub­li­ca­tion ‘Lux­u­ry launch­es’ re­port­ed that Lee-Chin had sold his mega yacht AH­PO, for US$362 mil­lion to Cana­di­an busi­ness­man, Patrick Dovi­gi. Lee-Chin took de­liv­ery of the six-storey yacht, which has been de­scribed as a “float­ing five-star re­sort,” in 2021.

The Ja­maica Ob­serv­er re­port­ed this month that the sale of the yacht was one in a string of dis­pos­als that Lee-Chin has made in the last two years. The news­pa­per re­port­ed Lee-Chin sold CVM Tele­vi­sion Lim­it­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2022 to Ver­ti­cast Me­dia Group. It was al­so re­port­ed that he sold 250-acre Reg­gae Beach in St Mary Ja­maica to MJR Re­al Es­tate Hold­ings which is man­aged by Bari­ta In­vest­ments Lim­it­ed.

Lee-Chin is al­so re­port­ed to have sold Med­ical As­so­ciates Hos­pi­tal in Kingston.

Last month, the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian re­port­ed that the busi­ness­man had put his beach­front, sev­en-bed­room, 8,400 square foot man­sion in Grand Cay­man up for sale.

NCBFG was in­cor­po­rat­ed in April 2016 to be li­censed un­der Ja­maica’s Bank­ing Ser­vices Act as the fi­nan­cial hold­ing com­pa­ny for Na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Bank Ja­maica Lim­it­ed (NCBJ).

Lee Chin built up sig­nif­i­cant as­sets in the last decade, us­ing his ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­ing in Ja­maica’s NCB Fi­nan­cial Group (NCBFG) to ac­quire a 29.9 per cent stake in GHL in No­vem­ber 2015. NCBFG in­creased its share­hold­ing in GHL to over 67 per cent in May 2019.

En­ti­ties con­trolled by Lee-Chin ac­quired a 68 per cent stake in Clar­ien Bank of Bermu­da in 2019.

NCBFG closed trad­ing on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change (TTSE) yes­ter­day at $3.30 and is down by 27.6 per cent for 2023, which it start­ed at $4.56.

The fi­nan­cial group’s all-time high price on the TTSE was on March 9, 2020, when it trad­ed at $11.35. NCBFG is down by 71 per cent from its all-time high on the lo­cal stock mar­ket.