ANSA Merchant’s income up 7%

ANSA Merchant Bank’s after-tax profit for the six month period ended June, 2012 is $79.3 million which is an increase 7.16 per cent from $74 million for the same period in 2011. The Bank and its subsidiaries produced a consolidated Earnings Per Share (EPS) of $0.93 for the first half of  2012 compared with $0.88 for the same period in 2011. The merchant bank also announced yesterday that it would pay an interim dividend of $0.15. The Chairman’s report said that ANSA Merchant Bank’s results for the first half of the year is six per cent higher than the prior year, despite the unsettled state of the global economy. “We are encouraged by this performance and are optimistic of continued progress,” the report said.

Speaking yesterday at the release of their half year report at Tatil Building, Maraval Road, Port-of-Spain, ANSA Merchant Bank’s managing director, Chip Sa Gomes, said there are discussions underway for the merchant bank to acquire the Barbados-based Consolidated Finance Co Limited (CFC) which were initiated by the ANSA McAL Limited parent company. “This is a company very much like ANSA Merchant Bank in Barbados and we see it as a strategic move for us. A lot of the transactions we do are out of Barbados,” he said. The report said CFC is a non-bank financial institution in Barbados and negotiations should be concluded in the fourth quarter of 2012.

Sa Gomes said although ANSA Merchant Bank is not a bank in the traditional sense it still performs better than the bigger banks in the industry. “We are not a bank, we are a non-bank. However we compare ourselves with some of the other banking competitors. If you look at our EPS, if you look at our return on assets, some of the entities that are much bigger than us and have international support are more volatile than us and we are much smaller. We are quite frugal on how we spend. If you look at our mutual funds offerings and if you stack us up against some of the bigger players, we are head and shoulders with them like Unit Trust Corporation (UTC) and other players,” he said.