Nadaleen Singh

Af­ter more than three decades of ser­vice to the bank and to the sec­tor, deputy chief ex­ec­u­tive of First Cit­i­zens, Sharon Christo­pher, tran­si­tioned in­to re­tire­ment this week, with her con­tri­bu­tion to the bank's de­vel­op­ment be­ing laud­ed.

In a state­ment to the T&T Guardian, First Cit­i­zens said: "Via her in­put, we were able to re­ceive nu­mer­ous awards such as: World Fi­nance, Eu­romoney, Latin Fi­nance, Glob­al Fi­nance more than one decade."

She al­so con­tributed to the strate­gic di­rec­tion of the bank and the deep­en­ing of its foot­print with­in some Cari­com-mem­ber coun­tries. Re­fer­ring specif­i­cal­ly to its Cos­ta Ri­ca op­er­a­tions, First Cit­i­zens said Christo­pher played a piv­otal role in en­sur­ing that the bank "ce­ment­ed" op­er­a­tions there. Op­er­a­tions in Cos­ta Ri­ca, ac­cord­ing to the state­ment, will fa­cil­i­tate the group's ob­jec­tive of deep­en­ing its foot­print in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca.

"If this is re­alised, (deep­en­ing the bank's foot­print in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca) First Cit­i­zens will be open to trans­port­ing it­self and fi­nan­cial ser­vices to man­u­fac­tur­ers and traders down the South Amer­i­can con­ti­nent."

De­scribed by her col­leagues as one of the key pil­lars of the bank and a fear­less leader, Christo­pher al­so con­tributed to what is con­sid­ered to be the largest Ini­tial Pub­lic Of­fer­ing in the his­to­ry of T&T.

The bank said: "She was in­stru­men­tal in grow­ing First Cit­i­zens from a lo­cal com­mer­cial bank to a fi­nan­cial pow­er­house with sub­sidiaries and a sol­id pres­ence in Bar­ba­dos, St Lu­cia, St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines and Cos­ta Ri­ca. Sharon is the epit­o­me of au­then­tic lead­er­ship and she was able to demon­strate and in­cul­cate this through­out the Group.

"We owe much of our growth and suc­cess to Sharon Christo­pher, her com­mit­ment to First Cit­i­zens can nev­er be ques­tioned. All of us at First Cit­i­zens will miss Sharon, the lawyer, the con­sum­mate sto­ry teller, the fear­less leader, the pa­tri­ot, and the in­tegri­ty cham­pi­on as she tran­si­tions to her new chap­ter in life. We wish her all suc­cess."

Apart from con­tribut­ing to the bank­ing sec­tor, she passed on her knowl­edge through con­tribut­ing to the In­sti­tute of Bank­ing and Fi­nance.

OTH­ER AC­COM­PLISH­MENTS

�2 In­stru­men­tal in set­ting up the merged en­ti­ty known as First Cit­i­zens which saved the jobs of hun­dreds of em­ploy­ees from Na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Bank, Work­ers Bank and Trinidad Co-op­er­a­tive Bank

�2 In 2004 she was in­stru­men­tal in the bank is­su­ing Bonds on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket

�2 Con­tributed to set­ting up First Cit­i­zens Trustee Ser­vices which func­tions as a Trustee for the bank's cor­po­rate clients

�2 Played a ma­jor role in re­brand­ing the group in 2005 to re­flect the "new" or­gan­i­sa­tion - not just three Banks com­ing to­geth­er but a group of well es­tab­lished com­pa­nies un­der one um­brel­la called First Cit­i­zens

�2 A key play­er in the ac­qui­si­tion of CMMB in 2009

�2 The in­tro­duc­tion of prof­it shar­ing for the bar­gain­ing unit staff al­low­ing the em­ploy­ees to share in the prof­its they helped pro­duce

�2 In­stru­men­tal in hav­ing the first Women's Con­fer­ence in T&T which start­ed four years ago.