Two CEOs of sub­sidiaries of NCB Fi­nan­cial Group (NCBFG), are leav­ing the Kingston, Ja­maica-based com­pa­ny, less than three months af­ter the two most se­nior ex­ec­u­tives of the group were asked to pro­ceed on leave, by mu­tu­al agree­ment.

De­part­ing the group is Sep­ti­mus Blake, whose term as the CEO of Na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Bank Ja­maica (NCBJ) comes to an end to­mor­row.

The oth­er ex­ec­u­tive to de­part is Steven Good­en, CEO of NCB Cap­i­tal Mar­kets Ltd, which is the im­me­di­ate par­ent of the NCB Mer­chant Bank (Trinidad and To­ba­go), the T&T non-bank fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion and bro­ker-deal­er.

In no­tices pub­lished on the T&T and Ja­maica stock ex­changes, where the com­pa­ny is list­ed, NCBFG ad­vised that Bruce Bowen would be­come the CEO of NCBJ ef­fec­tive Oc­to­ber 1, 2023. Bowen is a for­mer se­nior vice pres­i­dent of Sco­tia­bank’s op­er­a­tions in the Caribbean and he al­so served as the CEO of Sco­tia Group Ja­maica. He was ap­point­ed as a di­rec­tor of NCBJ ef­fec­tive Sep­tem­ber 26, 2023, and will con­tin­ue in his ca­pac­i­ty as a spe­cial ad­vi­sor to the in­ter­im group CEO of NCBFG, Robert Almei­da.

Almei­da was ap­point­ed to the po­si­tion short­ly af­ter the an­nounce­ment on Ju­ly 18 that the group CEO of NCBFG, Patrick Hyl­ton, and his deputy Den­nis Co­hen, were pro­ceed­ing on va­ca­tion leave for three weeks, by agree­ment.

The group’s de­ci­sion to send its two most se­nior ex­ec­u­tives on leave came the day af­ter NCBFG chair­man, Michael Lee-Chin, pre­ma­ture­ly re­turned from a leave of ab­sence of ap­prox­i­mate­ly three months, that was an­nounced on May 24.

In June, dur­ing his leave of ab­sence, Lee-Chin sold 38,708,700 shares in NCBFG across the floor of the Ja­maica Stock Ex­change. The share sale, which ac­count­ed for about 2.5 per cent of the 1.5 bil­lion shares of the group he owned, raised about US$17 mil­lion.

On Au­gust 10, NCBFG re­port­ed that its unau­dit­ed net prof­it for the nine months end­ed June 30, 2023, amount­ed to J$13.7 bil­lion (about US$88 mil­lion), which was a 47 per cent or J$12.2 bil­lion re­duc­tion from the pri­or year.

On Sep­tem­ber 11, the group dis­closed that it was con­sid­er­ing an Ad­di­tion­al Pub­lic Of­fer­ing (APO) of up to 300 mil­lion new shares in NCBFG, aimed at rais­ing cap­i­tal for the fi­nan­cial ser­vices group.

In an in­ter­view with the Guardian yes­ter­day, Lee-Chin ex­plained that the de­par­ture of Blake and Good­en was as a re­sult of NCBFG de­cid­ing to “de­lay­er” the group, which he de­scribed as a trans­for­ma­tion­al ini­tia­tive de­signed to bring the com­pa­ny and its sub­sidiaries clos­er to its cus­tomers.

“Some­times stars align as com­pa­nies pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly change their bear­ings and peo­ple may want to go on to do oth­er things... We did not push out any­one,” said Lee-Chin.

He said that si­mul­ta­ne­ous with the de­lay­er­ing of the group, a de­ci­sion had been tak­en to hive off the wealth man­age­ment busi­ness from NCB Cap­i­tal Mar­kets.

“We are putting wealth man­age­ment on its own with an in­de­pen­dent fo­cus and its own growth tra­jec­to­ry.”

Asked whether NCBFG had come to a set­tle­ment with Hyl­ton and Co­hen, Lee-Chin said that that was “a work in progress”.

In its no­tices, NCBFG said it ap­pre­ci­at­ed the con­tri­bu­tions of Blake and Good­en.