An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

To­ba­go-born at­tor­ney-at-law Christlyn Moore has been ap­point­ed to the board of di­rec­tors of Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL). The ap­point­ment took ef­fect on Tues­day.

Moore, a for­mer min­is­ter of jus­tice and ex­pe­ri­enced lit­i­ga­tion at­tor­ney, brings more than 16 years of ex­pe­ri­ence at both the crim­i­nal and civ­il bar to the fi­nan­cial ser­vices group’s board.

When Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed her about her ap­point­ment, Moore of­fered a brief re­sponse, “The re­ward for good work is more work.”

She was ap­point­ed Min­is­ter of Jus­tice on Sep­tem­ber 26, 2012.

Moore grad­u­at­ed from the Hugh Wood­ing Law School in 1995 be­fore es­tab­lish­ing Re­nais­sance Cham­bers, a gen­er­al le­gal prac­tice serv­ing lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al clients.

The firm han­dles lit­i­ga­tion, com­mer­cial and cor­po­rate mat­ters, ad­min­is­tra­tive law and con­veyanc­ing.

Moore is al­so a for­mer tu­tor at the Hugh Wood­ing Law School and has ex­pe­ri­ence in Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU) mat­ters and an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing (AML) com­pli­ance.

In ad­di­tion to man­ag­ing Re­nais­sance Cham­bers, she served as in­struct­ing at­tor­ney to the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the events sur­round­ing the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup.

She has al­so rep­re­sent­ed the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in sev­er­al le­gal mat­ters.

RFHL com­mu­ni­cat­ed the ap­point­ment in a no­tice signed by group gen­er­al coun­sel and cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Kim­ber­ly Erri­ah-Ali.

In pre­sent­ing the 2026 bud­get, de­liv­ered on Oc­to­ber 13, 2025, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo said the Gov­ern­ment had in­stalled new boards at First Cit­i­zens Bank and the Ex­im­Bank, and that it would move to in­stall a ma­jor­i­ty of di­rec­tors at Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd.

“I am proud to an­nounce that in our ef­fort to build eco­nom­ic fair­ness, To­ba­go’s in­ter­ests will be rep­re­sent­ed on all three boards, with a To­bag­on­ian on each board,” said Tan­coo.

Moore’s ap­point­ment brings the num­ber of di­rec­tors on the RFHL board back to 13. They are: Yash­mid Kara­math (chair­man); Dr Tim­o­thy Af­fon­so; Gre­go­ry Ar­mor­er; Nali­ni Bansee; Rhion Karim; Dr Pa­tri­cia Mo­hammed and Dr San­dra Sookram. Those sev­en di­rec­tors were ap­point­ed by the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The oth­er four non-ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tors of the fi­nan­cial ser­vices group are Ian L Ben­jamin, Michael Noel, Col­in Soo Ping Chow and Robert Wick­ham. Ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, Nigel Bap­tiste, is due to re­tire as pres­i­dent and CEO of RFHL to­mor­row.

In a no­tice pub­lished on the web­site of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change on Wednes­day, RFHL said, “We ad­vise that fol­low­ing the of­fi­cial re­tire­ment date of Mr Nigel Bap­tiste, May 10, 2026 as group pres­i­dent and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd and pres­i­dent and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd, Mr Nigel Bap­tiste’s con­tract of ex­ten­sion comes to an end ef­fec­tive No­vem­ber 13, 2026.”

Bap­tiste had orig­i­nal­ly agreed to stay on un­til De­cem­ber 31, 2026, to fa­cil­i­tate the tran­si­tion of group vice pres­i­dent Richard Sam­my to the job of group pres­i­dent and CEO on Jan­u­ary 1, 2027. Sam­my re­signed his po­si­tion at RFHL, and as vice pres­i­dent at RBL, on Oc­to­ber 14.

For the year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2026, RFHL record­ed net prof­it at­trib­ut­able to eq­ui­ty hold­ers of $2.3 bil­lion, rep­re­sent­ing an in­crease of 5.8 per cent over the pri­or year. To­tal as­sets grew to $135.5 bil­lion, while earn­ings per share in­creased to $14.22, com­pared with $13.44 in the pre­vi­ous year.

Based on its per­for­mance, the board of di­rec­tors de­clared a fi­nal div­i­dend of $4.15 per share, bring­ing the to­tal div­i­dend to $6.30 per share for the fis­cal year (2025: $6.00), an in­crease of 5 per cent or $0.30, over the pre­vi­ous year.