Richard Sam­my, the em­bat­tled group vice pres­i­dent of Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL), de­part­ed the re­gion's largest fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion on Wednes­day, bank sources told Guardian Me­dia.

In a state­ment to be re­leased lat­er to­day, the bank is ex­pect­ed to de­scribe Sam­my's de­par­ture as be­ing by mu­tu­al agree­ment. But his leav­ing the bank fol­lows at least one month of chat­ter in fi­nan­cial cir­cles that he would not take up the po­si­tion of group pres­i­dent and CEO of RFHL on Jan­u­ary 1, 2027. The chat­ter was re­port­ed on so­cial me­dia.

On Jan­u­ary 30, 2026, RFHL an­nounced that Sam­my would take over from Nigel Bap­tiste as Re­pub­lic's top ex­ec­u­tive for both its hold­ing com­pa­ny and its T&T sub­sidiary, Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd, at the start of next year.

In a no­tice pub­lished on the web­site of the Trinidad & To­ba­go Stock Ex­change dat­ed Jan­u­ary 30, RFHL said, "We ad­vise of the ap­point­ment of Mr Richard Sam­my as group pres­i­dent and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fice of Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd and pres­i­dent and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd with ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1, 2027."