GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

As Gov­ern­ment moves to ap­point a ma­jor­i­ty of the di­rec­tors on the board of Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL), which would en­sure con­trol by the State of the re­gion’s largest fi­nan­cial ser­vices com­pa­ny, di­rec­tor Ja­son Mootoo, an at­tor­ney, has re­signed.

A no­tice post­ed on the T&T Stock Ex­change yes­ter­day said that no­tice pur­suant to Sec­tion 64(1)(B) of the Se­cu­ri­ties Act 2012 RFHL has ad­vised that Mootoo, SC, re­signed from its board of di­rec­tors, ef­fec­tive No­vem­ber 21, 2025.

No ex­pla­na­tion was giv­en for his res­ig­na­tion.

There is al­so spec­u­la­tion that an­oth­er board mem­ber is al­so set to re­sign.

A pre­vi­ous re­lease from the bank had stat­ed that Mootoo’s pri­ma­ry ar­eas of prac­tice in­clude, in­ter alia, com­mer­cial dis­putes and ar­bi­tra­tion, con­trac­tu­al claims, com­pa­ny law dis­putes, bank­ing and fi­nance, re­ceiver­ships and liq­ui­da­tion and trusts.

Dur­ing his ca­reer, he act­ed for and ad­vised a va­ri­ety of or­gan­i­sa­tions in­clud­ing multi­na­tion­als, fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, and pub­licly list­ed com­pa­nies.

The cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s de­sire to take con­trol of the board of RFHL was sig­nalled by Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, in de­liv­er­ing the 2026 Bud­get on Oc­to­ber 13.

“We have in­stalled new boards at First Cit­i­zens Bank and the Ex­im­bank, and we will move to in­stall a ma­jor­i­ty of di­rec­tors at Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed,” Tan­coo said.

The in­di­ca­tion of the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion was con­firmed in RFHL’s 2025 an­nu­al re­port, which was al­so post­ed on the com­pa­ny’s web­site.

For its 2025 fi­nan­cial year, which ran from Oc­to­ber 1, 2024 to Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025, RFHL had 12 di­rec­tors. Those di­rec­tors are: Vin­cent Pereira (chair­man); Nigel Bap­tiste; Ian Ben­jamin; Dawn Cal­len­der; Shameer Mo­hammed; Michael Noel; Robert Ri­ley; Walt­nel X Sosa; Kris­tine Thomp­son; Ja­son Mootoo; Robert Wick­ham and Col­in Soo Ping Chow.

Of the 12 di­rec­tors, Kris­tine Thomp­son re­tires from the board at the an­nu­al meet­ing, which is sched­uled for De­cem­ber 15, but will not of­fer her­self for re-elec­tion.

RFHL chair­man Vin­cent Pereira is like­ly to re­sign from the board at the an­nu­al meet­ing on De­cem­ber 15, as he has turned 70, which is the age lim­it for the bank’s di­rec­tors.

Pereira was ap­point­ed chair­man of RFHL and Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd in 2020.

He joined the Re­pub­lic Group in Ju­ly 2019 as a mem­ber of the Board of Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd and is the im­me­di­ate past pres­i­dent of BHP T&T. He al­so served as the chair­man of At­lantic LNG.

In De­cem­ber 2023, Pe­ter In­gle­field re­tired from the board.

In­gle­field was first ap­point­ed a di­rec­tor in 2020, chaired RFHL’s au­dit sub­com­mit­tee and served as a mem­ber of the En­ter­prise Risk sub­com­mit­tee.