An­tho­ny Wil­son

Con­sul­tant busi­ness ed­i­tor

an­tho­ny.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL) has re­versed its pub­licly an­nounced suc­ces­sion plan, re­plac­ing Richard Sam­my with Karen Yip Chuck less than nine months af­ter nam­ing him to suc­ceed Nigel Bap­tiste as head of the re­gion­al bank­ing group gi­ant.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, RFHL con­firmed the change af­ter Guardian Me­dia first re­port­ed Sam­my’s de­par­ture, but the group did not ex­plain why its board had changed course.

Sam­my left the in­sti­tu­tion on Wednes­day, Oc­to­ber 14, more than two months be­fore he was due to as­sume the post of group pres­i­dent and CEO on Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

His de­par­ture comes amid re­ports that fi­nanciers of the rul­ing Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress had lob­bied for Yip Chuck to be ap­point­ed in­stead. Asked whether UNC fi­nanciers had favoured Yip Chuck over Sam­my and lob­bied for her ap­point­ment, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo dis­missed the sug­ges­tion as “ab­solute and com­plete rub­bish”.

Sam­my, a group vice pres­i­dent, was named Bap­tiste’s suc­ces­sor on Jan­u­ary 30 by a board chaired by Yash­mid Kara­math. RFHL an­nounced that Sam­my would al­so be­come pres­i­dent and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of RFHL’s T&T sub­sidiary, Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd, ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

How­ev­er, the group con­firmed yes­ter­day that, sub­ject to reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval, Yip Chuck would as­sume both po­si­tions on that date in­stead.

Re­ports cir­cu­lat­ed since ear­ly Sep­tem­ber that el­e­ments with­in the Gov­ern­ment want­ed Sam­my re­placed to ac­com­mo­date Yip Chuck.

Yes­ter­day, Kara­math thanked Sam­my for his con­tri­bu­tion, de­scrib­ing him as a man of “un­ques­tion­able in­tegri­ty” whose ca­reer had been guid­ed by his val­ues and the best in­ter­ests of the group.

Sam­my, who spent 18 years with Re­pub­lic, said in the bank’s news re­lease: “I trea­sure the strong re­la­tion­ships I have built with our cus­tomers, the ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship, and the en­tire Re­pub­lic fam­i­ly. It has been my priv­i­lege to serve and I wish the Group every suc­cess in the fu­ture.”

Yip Chuck, who was elect­ed as the pres­i­dent of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce in April, has spent more than three decades with the Re­pub­lic group, ris­ing through se­nior man­age­ment be­fore be­com­ing a group vice pres­i­dent in No­vem­ber 2022.

The lead­er­ship change comes amid oth­er se­nior-lev­el de­par­tures in the fi­nan­cial sec­tor. At the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Niala Per­sad-Po­li­ah and deputy ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Andy Ed­wards are due to re­tire ear­ly on De­cem­ber 13. At First Cit­i­zens, Ja­son Julien’s res­ig­na­tion as CEO took ef­fect on Au­gust 31, with Sana Rag­bir ap­point­ed act­ing CEO the fol­low­ing day.

RFHL is al­so ap­proach­ing its an­nu­al meet­ing in De­cem­ber, when three di­rec­tors—Ian Ben­jamin, Col­in Soo Ping Chow and Michael Noel—are due to re­tire by ro­ta­tion.

The lead­er­ship change comes against the back­ground of the State’s sig­nif­i­cant share­hold­ing in RFHL. Ac­cord­ing to the group’s 2025 an­nu­al re­port, the Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund Hold­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd (NIF) held 29.92 per cent of RFHL, while the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board (NIB) held 18.81 per cent. NIB ac­quired a fur­ther 4.43 mil­lion shares on Sep­tem­ber 2, in­creas­ing its hold­ing to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 21.5 per cent. To­geth­er, NIF and NIB now hold ap­prox­i­mate­ly 51.43 per cent of RFHL.

RFHL re­port­ed to­tal as­sets of $134.6 bil­lion (US$19.9 bil­lion) at June 30, 2026. Its shares closed at $114 on Oc­to­ber 15, im­ply­ing a mar­ket cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $18.7 bil­lion (US$2.75 bil­lion).

Con­tact­ed in Thai­land yes­ter­day, where he is at­tend­ing the Au­tumn meet­ings of the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund, Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor, Lar­ry Howai, de­scribed Yip Chuck as an “ex­cel­lent banker, and the fact that she got to her po­si­tion is tes­ti­mo­ny to her ca­pa­bil­i­ty and ex­pe­ri­ence.”