Howai meets union on FCB share purchase Tuesday, March 11 2014 THE president of the Banking, Insurance and General Workers Union (BIGWU) yesterday met with Finance Minister Larry Howai to express concerns about the alleged breakdown of corporate governance at First Citizens Bank (FCB). According to BIGWU president Vincent Cabrera, the union is concerned about the kind of action, if any, Government intends to take regarding a FCB manager’s purchasing of 659,588 shares during last year’s Initial Public Offer (IPO). “What has taken place at the bank is a breakdown of the system of corporate governance and the new Public Private ownership pattern, regarding the IPO, that the Government introduced,” Cabrera said. He described the more than $14 million FCB share purchase as insider trading comparing it to the 1995 incident in which CL Financial (CLF) obtained Republic Bank shares under controversial circumstances. The Republic shares, originally owned by the TTEC Pension Fund, were sold to Viveka Holdings whose co-owner was former CLF group financial director Andre Monteil who was also TTEC chairman and head of the TTEC Pension Fund. Cabrera also compared it to the transfer of Clico-owned Home Mortgage Bank (HMB) shares to Stone Street Capital, of which Monteil was a director. According to Cabrera, Howai told the union there may be litigation coming out of the situation and so he did not want to say much. However, Howai said the Ministry had engaged PricewaterhouseCoopers Trinidad and would receive an audit report in a few weeks. In addition to the IPO issue, Cabrera stated that the industrial relations climate at the bank was discussed. He said First Citizens conducted a compensation survey which revealed that many grades of workers were being paid below the market rate. -Newsday
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 15:33:53 +0000
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