Last Wednes­day, Gre­go­ry Hill of­fi­cial­ly stepped down as the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of ANSA Mer­chant Bank, a po­si­tion he held for 16 years.

On Thurs­day, he start­ed a new job as vice pres­i­dent of Fi­nance and Cor­po­rate Ser­vices at the Bridgetown, Bar­ba­dos-based Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB), tak­ing charge of a port­fo­lio that in­cludes fi­nance, hu­man re­sources, in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy and com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

In a news re­lease an­nounc­ing his ap­point­ment, the CDB said Hill’s re­mit in­clud­ed re­source mo­bil­i­sa­tion, and that he would lead the thrust to in­crease ac­cess to de­vel­op­ment fi­nance for CDB’s Bor­row­ing Mem­ber Coun­tries (BM­Cs).

“As a mat­ter of high pri­or­i­ty, the Bank is fo­cused on en­hanc­ing the fi­nan­cial ecosys­tem sup­port­ing the re­gion’s economies to meet the unique and var­ied needs of our Bor­row­ing Mem­ber Coun­tries who must bal­ance cur­rent fis­cal oblig­a­tions with strate­gies for fu­ture growth while build­ing re­silience to with­stand fi­nan­cial, cli­mate or so­cial shocks.

“Gre­go­ry’s wealth of ex­pe­ri­ence in the re­gion­al bank­ing sec­tor will be in­valu­able to CDB and I am pleased to wel­come him to the ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship team,” said CDB Pres­i­dent, Dr Hy­gi­nus “Gene” Leon.

Yes­ter­day, as part of a three-mem­ber CDB team, he was sched­uled to fly to Mar­rakech in Mo­roc­co for the 2023 an­nu­al meet­ings of the World Bank Group and the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund, which starts on Mon­day.

He holds a BSc de­gree in eco­nom­ics from The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and an Ex­ec­u­tive MBA from the Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness. He is al­so a grad­u­ate and Fel­low of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Char­tered Cer­ti­fied Ac­coun­tants, (UK) (FC­CA) and a mem­ber of the In­sti­tute of Char­tered Ac­coun­tants of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

As Hill told Guardian Me­dia’s con­sul­tant busi­ness ed­i­tor, An­tho­ny Wil­son, in an in­ter­view at the ANSA Mer­chant board room last Tues­day, he ex­pects the tran­si­tion from in­vest­ment banker to de­vel­op­ment banker to be smooth and seam­less–as he will be ap­ply­ing skills he has honed over decades of work in the fi­nan­cial sec­tor.

The in­ter­view was edit­ed for length and clar­i­ty.

Q: Tell me about the job that you’re go­ing to the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank to do?

A: The job is fo­cused on build­ing ca­pac­i­ty to take the CDB to the next par­digm. The CDB’s role has al­ways been para­mount to re­gion­al de­vel­op­ment. The vi­sion of the Pres­i­dent of the Bank is to ex­pand the im­pact of the work of the CDB in the re­gion. And to ex­pand that im­pact, and to en­gen­der a more broad-based eco­nom­ic and trans­for­ma­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, the CDB needs some ca­pac­i­ty build­ing.

Q: How does what you’ve been do­ing for the last 16 years align with what you’re go­ing to be do­ing at the CDB?

A: The role is to build that ca­pac­i­ty in terms of rais­ing cap­i­tal for the CDB, ex­pand­ing the fund­ing in­stru­ments and of course mak­ing sure we have the re­sources, the op­er­a­tional sys­tems, the tech­nol­o­gy and the project man­age­ment ca­pa­bil­i­ties to be able to ex­e­cute on that strat­e­gy. So the job is re­al­ly about ca­pac­i­ty build­ing.

The ti­tle is vice pres­i­dent of Fi­nance and Cor­po­rate Ser­vices. And it pret­ty much en­com­pass­es most of the day-to-day op­er­a­tions of the bank be­cause, as you know, the pres­i­dent’s job is a tough one re­quir­ing him to be every­where, not on­ly re­gion­al­ly but in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. As a mat­ter of fact, I go with the pres­i­dent to Mar­rakech in Mo­roc­co af­ter two days of work. I start on Thurs­day and by Sat­ur­day (yes­ter­day) we head off to Mar­rakech for eight days.

I would have spent a sig­nif­i­cant amount of time do­ing lend­ing in Trinidad and ar­rang­ing trans­ac­tions in Trinidad in my ear­ly days with the Cana­di­an banks.

More specif­i­cal­ly, when I moved to the RBC group, which would have been RBTT Fi­nan­cial at that time, I would have spent a lot of time ar­rang­ing hun­dreds of trans­ac­tions across the re­gion, in all cur­ren­cies and in North­ern Caribbean, South­ern Caribbean, Span­ish and Dutch Caribbean, and ar­rang­ing fund­ing for sov­er­eigns, util­i­ties, roads, air­ports, con­glom­er­ates, M&A (Merg­er and Ac­qui­si­tion) trans­ac­tions and re­struc­tur­ings. Not on­ly rais­ing cap­i­tal in the re­gion but al­so ex­tra re­gion­al­ly, both in the US and Eu­rope. So all of that would have built the foun­da­tion for the mo­bil­i­sa­tion of cap­i­tal in the re­gion.

When I joined Roy­al Bank, I used to be on the road quite a bit, deal­ing with all of the gov­ern­ments across the re­gion. Tak­ing some to Wall Street for the first time to raise cap­i­tal. And then we chose to part­ner with glob­al banks as well as we felt in the Caribbean we could help arrange our own fi­nanc­ing, in a sense con­trol our own des­tiny at a time when on­ly one or two for­eign banks would come in and arrange fi­nanc­ing.

So let me fast for­ward to ANSA Mer­chant Bank. As you know, we’ve re­al­ly grown the in­vest­ment bank­ing and mer­chant bank­ing fran­chise here over the last 16 years, to the point where we had 25 to 35 per cent mar­ket share at times.

So, the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of ex­pe­ri­ences both re­gion­al­ly and at ANSA Mer­chant Bank–where we al­so did trans­ac­tions in the re­gion, but pri­mar­i­ly Trinidad and Bar­ba­dos–ties in to what I’m go­ing to do now. That’s be­cause as man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of ANSA Mer­chant Bank, I would have had re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the over­all strat­e­gy of the com­pa­ny, which in­cludes cap­i­tal rais­ing, trea­sury and fi­nance and ac­count­ing re­sources.

I would have tak­en the bank from what was orig­i­nal­ly a car fi­nance com­pa­ny, to be­come a full-fledged in­te­grat­ed fi­nan­cial ser­vices en­ti­ty in 16 years.

So, we would have gone from re­tail to com­mer­cial to cor­po­rate cus­tomers. We launched busi­ness bank­ing, in­vest­ment bank­ing, mer­chant bank­ing. We ex­pand­ed our as­set man­age­ment busi­ness, the ex­pan­sion of all funds, for­eign ex­change trad­ing, bond trad­ing and pri­vate place­ments.

So the range of prod­ucts and ser­vices that we did at ANSA Mer­chant Bank, not to men­tion the di­vi­sions that we launched, re­al­ly would have honed that skillset in terms of build­ing ca­pac­i­ty.

Q: What would you say was the high­light of your time at ANSA McAL?

A: I have to say the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work with the pi­o­neer, the vi­sion­ary Dr An­tho­ny N Sab­ga, who built the ANSA McAL em­pire, was the high­light of my time at the group.

He cap­tures quite nice­ly in his book ‘A Will and a Way’ what his as­pi­ra­tion was for the growth of the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions in the group.

When I left RBTT Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings in 2007, RBC was just then look­ing to ac­quire the bank. As a young banker, there was an el­e­ment of an en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it that I felt was aligned to Dr Sab­ga’s vi­sion. He al­ways want­ed ANSA McAL to be a much larg­er or­gan­i­sa­tion than it was. And that was a beau­ti­ful thing. It was the high­light of my ca­reer work­ing so close­ly with him. He was such a vi­sion­ary. We used to call him the busi­ness­man with the Mi­das touch.

He was a very in­flu­en­tial and strong in­flu­ence in my life. So those times when we were build­ing the busi­ness, there was a lot of ex­cite­ment and en­er­gy. We were do­ing our first deal, a sec­ond and then a third, and then ex­pand­ing the com­pa­ny, adding more mu­tu­al funds and get­ting in­to more prod­ucts and ser­vices.

We would spend the whole day go­ing to see clients to­geth­er, both at the SME and re­tail lev­el, as well as meet­ing with in­sti­tu­tion­al in­vestors, Dr Sab­ga be­ing part of those dis­cus­sions. It was a lot of ex­cite­ment. I would say that was what kept me so fo­cused on ex­pand­ing the busi­ness.

And then I had the abil­i­ty to work with Nor­man Sab­ga, as well, who is now the chair­man of ANSA Mer­chant Bank and that han­dover was seam­less. They treat­ed me like fam­i­ly along the way. And I got to work with An­tho­ny Sab­ga III, as the ANSA McAL Group CEO. We have had a re­al­ly splen­did time over the years.

I joined the group short­ly af­ter him and we got a chance to work to­geth­er when he first joined and now more and more in his role as Group CEO, see­ing him trans­form the or­gan­i­sa­tion and his vi­sion for it. I’m re­al­ly ex­cit­ed about what the fu­ture will hold for the ANSA McAL X 2 strat­e­gy.

The sec­ond thing would be the role we played in de­vel­op­ing the cap­i­tal mar­ket in the re­gion. That was ex­cit­ing. See­ing us con­tribute to the Se­cu­ri­ty Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, con­tribute to the de­vel­op­ment of cap­i­tal mar­ket. We’ve done new and in­no­v­a­tive deals that oth­ers have not done be­fore. When you think that there’s noth­ing new that can be done, and al­so watch­ing our tal­ent grow and ex­e­cut­ing these prod­ucts. I mean, that al­so was the high­light of my ca­reer.