Share­hold­ers of ma­jor­i­ty state-owned First Cit­i­zens Group Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd are due to at­tend a spe­cial meet­ing this morn­ing to se­lect a new board for the com­pa­ny.

Ahead of the bank’s spe­cial meet­ing, all mem­bers of its board of di­rec­tors re­signed yes­ter­day.

New board mem­bers are sched­uled to be nom­i­nat­ed at a spe­cial meet­ing of share­hold­ers, which will be held at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), start­ing at 10am.

The chair­man of the pre­vi­ous board was An­tho­ny Smart, along with di­rec­tors Courte­nay B Williams, Sav­it­ree Seep­er­sad, Idrees Omardeen, Jay­selle Mc­Far­lane, Troy Gar­cia, and Col­in Wharfe.

They are ex­pect­ed to be re­placed by a board chaired by cor­po­rate at­tor­ney Shankar Bidaisee and com­pris­ing di­rec­tors Ster­ling Frost, vice chair; Crys­telle Smith; Prakash Dhan­ra­jh; Sandy Roopc­hand; J0-Anne Boodoos­ingh; Ja­van Lewis; Nichelle Grander­son and Tri­cia Mc­Neil-Beck­les.

The lead­er­ship of the com­pa­ny was put un­der a cloud for some time.

On April 4, 2025, First Cit­i­zens is­sued a ma­te­r­i­al change no­tice an­nounc­ing that the board of the com­pa­ny had tak­en the de­ci­sion on March 28, 2025, to ap­point Ja­son Julien as the group CEO to re­place Karen Dar­basie up­on her re­tire­ment.

This ap­peared to be a seam­less tran­si­tion un­til it was in­cor­rect­ly re­port­ed in an­oth­er news­pa­per in Au­gust, that Dar­basie had ten­dered her res­ig­na­tion as group CEO “in a sud­den and un­ex­plained move” and that her res­ig­na­tion had been sub­mit­ted to Cor­po­ra­tion Sole, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, on Au­gust 20.

It was lat­er con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that Dar­basie did not sub­mit a let­ter of res­ig­na­tion.

Dar­basie is cur­rent­ly on va­ca­tion leave and will re­tire ef­fec­tive Oc­to­ber 21 with deputy CEO Ja­son Julien set to take the helm.

First Cit­i­zens Hold­ings Ltd, which is ful­ly owned by the Cor­po­ra­tion Sole on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment, re­mains the ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er in the First Cit­i­zens Group, hold­ing 60.11 per cent of its shares. The group’s sec­ond largest share­hold­er is the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board of Trinidad and To­ba­go, which owns 8.07 per cent.

The First Cit­i­zens Bank, the main sub­sidiary of the Group, man­aged an as­set base of $47.1 bil­lion, as at Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024, its fi­nan­cial year end. The in­sti­tu­tion op­er­ates 25 branch­es across Trinidad, three in To­ba­go, and five in Bar­ba­dos, as well as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of­fice in Cos­ta Ri­ca, ded­i­cat­ed to serv­ing its Latin Amer­i­can clien­tele.

The re­place­ment of the board of First Cit­i­zens, fol­lowed the de­par­ture of Garvin Med­era as CEO of Caribbean Air­lines last Fri­day and the an­nounce­ment of re­struc­tur­ing at the ex­ec­u­tive lev­el at ma­jor­i­ty state-owned TSTT last week.