An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert yes­ter­day raised con­cerns about un­usu­al trad­ing ac­tiv­i­ty in­volv­ing shares of ma­jor­i­ty state-owned First Cit­i­zens Group Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings (FCGFH), the par­ent com­pa­ny of First Cit­i­zens.
In a post on X, the plat­form for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter, Im­bert said “some­thing sin­is­ter” ap­peared to be hap­pen­ing with the price of FCGFH shares on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change since April 28.

He not­ed that de­spite the bank’s earn­ings con­tin­u­al­ly im­prov­ing over the years, its share price had dropped by 26 per cent from $42 on April 28 to $31 on No­vem­ber 10.
He sug­gest­ed that the de­cline could not be ex­plained by the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial per­for­mance, say­ing such a fall “can­not hap­pen un­less some­one is ma­nip­u­lat­ing the price.” Im­bert lat­er clar­i­fied that FCGFH is the sym­bol for FCB shares.

When Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed First Cit­i­zens Group Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd’s (FCGFH) chair­man, at­tor­ney Shankar Bidaisee, he said he had re­ferred the for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter’s post to man­age­ment “to look in­to it and re­port ac­cord­ing­ly.”

First Cit­i­zens Group’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Ja­son Julien, told Guardian Me­dia, “We don’t have a com­ment on the mat­ter raised at this time, but please be as­sured that the Group re­mains fo­cused on ex­e­cut­ing our strat­e­gy and cre­at­ing sus­tain­able val­ue for all our stake­hold­ers.”

On Mon­day, First Cit­i­zens fell by 10.33 per cent, drop­ping $3.57 to close on $31. The stock rose by 6.45 per cent yes­ter­day, adding $2 to close at $33.

Gov­ern­ment ini­ti­at­ed an ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing (IPO) of shares in First Cit­i­zens in 2013 and the com­pa­ny was list­ed on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change (TTSE) on Sep­tem­ber 16, 2013 at a price of $22 per share.

In 2022, the Gov­ern­ment sold more shares in the bank in an ad­di­tion­al pub­lic of­fer­ing (APO), which re­duced its share­hold­ing in the bank to 60.1 per cent.