An­tho­ny Wil­son

On Feb­ru­ary 14, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai is­sued a state­ment in which he said his min­istry had re­quest­ed a de­tailed au­dit of the dis­tri­b­u­tion of shares in the First Cit­i­zens ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing (IPO).

The min­is­ter di­rect­ed that this au­dit be un­der­tak­en, he said, be­cause of ques­tions that had been raised in the pub­lic sur­round­ing the fact that a se­nior ex­ec­u­tive of the bank had pur­chased 659,588 First Cit­i­zens shares for $14.5 mil­lion.

Ac­cord­ing to Mr Howai's state­ment: "The Gov­ern­ment's pub­lic pol­i­cy po­si­tion on share own­er­ship in pri­vati­sa­tions re­mains clear and trans­par­ent. The in­ten­tion is that there should be the widest pos­si­ble dis­tri­b­u­tion among the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. This is achieved through a well es­tab­lished al­lo­ca­tion for­mu­la."

The in­for­ma­tion about the $14.5 mil­lion ac­qui­si­tion by the se­nior of­fi­cer was pub­lished in the bank's 2013 an­nu­al re­port, its first as a pub­licly-list­ed com­pa­ny. All list­ed com­pa­nies are re­quired by law to list the share­hold­ings of their se­nior of­fi­cers and di­rec­tors in their own com­pa­nies. There is a re­quire­ment that these list­ed com­pa­nies must al­so dis­close pub­licly when their se­nior of­fi­cers and di­rec­tors trade in the shares of the com­pa­nies for which they work. (See side­bar)