Against the back­drop of the Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor ex­press­ing con­cern last week that the T&T econ­o­my was a slump, the First Cit­i­zens Group record­ed a six-month af­ter-tax prof­it for 2012 of $342.8 mil­lion. That's a ten per cent in­crease from the $312.1 mil­lion fig­ure for the same pe­ri­od in 2011.

First Cit­i­zens' chair­per­son Nyree Al­fon­so said in pub­lished re­sults: "This per­for­mance was par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy, giv­en the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cli­mate. The Group's to­tal as­sets showed a year-on-year growth of 3 per cent, with the as­set base in­creas­ing to $31.4 bil­lion as at March 2012."

Speak­ing at the re­lease of the April 2012 Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Re­port, Gov­er­nor Ewart Williams said: "Our sit­u­a­tion is even more se­ri­ous in that we have had neg­a­tive growth for three years; that's the is­sue. It's not so much the quar­ter­ly vari­a­tions. We have had neg­a­tive growth for three years and that's our chal­lenge: How do we get out of that slump?"

Al­fon­so spoke of First Cit­i­zens "new strate­gic ini­tia­tives"-name­ly its es­tab­lish­ment of a Cos­ta Ri­ca rep­re­sen­ta­tive of­fice and the ex­e­cu­tion of a share sale agree­ment for the ac­qui­si­tion of the But­ter­field Bank (Bar­ba­dos) Ltd. Lar­ry Howai, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of First Cit­i­zens Group, said dur­ing the May 16-19 Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad ho­tel that the But­ter­field ac­qui­si­tion cost an es­ti­mat­ed US$45 mil­lion.

""We have been look­ing at Bar­ba­dos as an in­vest­ment grade-rat­ed coun­try that we should ex­pand our busi­ness in­to for quite a while," Howai said. "The op­por­tu­ni­ty came up and we thought we would take ad­van­tage of it. With just five branch­es, the cost of the ac­qui­si­tion was about US$45 mil­lion."