In a trans­ac­tion that im­me­di­ate­ly start­ed stock mar­ket tongues wag­ging, some 1.5 mil­lion Re­pub­lic Bank shares trad­ed on the lo­cal stock mar­ket yes­ter­day at $81.50 a share for a to­tal val­ue of $122 mil­lion. Stock mar­ket sources said the sell­er of the block of shares was like­ly to have been Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank and the buy­er, a trust ac­count man­aged by Re­pub­lic Bank. Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank, which col­lapsed ear­ly in 2009, owns 32 mil­lion Re­pub­lic Bank shares, which is equiv­a­lent to about 20 per cent of the bank.

A sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of those shares have been pledged to oth­er fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions as col­lat­er­al for loans un­der­tak­en by Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank. The Guardian un­der­stands that the Eu­ro­pean In­vest­ment Bank was hold­ing the 1.5 mil­lion Re­pub­lic Bank shares as col­lat­er­al for a loan to Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank. The sell­er's bro­ker was First Cit­i­zens Se­cu­ri­ties (for­mer­ly Caribbean Mon­ey Mar­ket Bro­kers) and the buy­er was rep­re­sent­ed by Re­pub­lic Se­cu­ri­ties.