Raphael John-Lall

Arvin­der Bharath, wife of Trade Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath, has de­nied that she will be tak­ing up a job at state-owned First Cit­i­zens Bank (FCB).In­stead, she said she has "per­son­al op­tions" when she leaves RBC Bank at the end of June."There is no truth that I would be go­ing to FCB to work," Bharath told the T&T Guardian in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

"I am leav­ing RBC be­cause of some per­son­al stuff and oth­er things that I would like to do and I am mov­ing on to do those. I have worked at RBC for four years. If I were go­ing to a next bank my res­ig­na­tion from RBC would have been im­me­di­ate and I would not have giv­en them any no­tice."

Ac­cord­ing to a Sun­day Guardian re­port, RBC's re­gion­al man­ag­er for em­ploy­ee com­mu­ni­ca­tions of Caribbean bank­ing Nicole Duke-West­field said RBC was work­ing to tran­si­tion to a new lead­er­ship with­in the short­est pos­si­ble time now that Bharath is leav­ing.Ef­fec­tive June 28, Bharath said she would be re­sign­ing as mar­ket head of per­son­al bank­ing and that she would be ex­plor­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties both in and out of T&T.

"At this time I have no de­sire to re­main in the bank­ing sec­tor. I am ac­tu­al­ly go­ing to be pur­su­ing some per­son­al op­por­tu­ni­ties. There are sev­er­al op­por­tu­ni­ties that I am look­ing at," she said.She said she did not have any "re­grets" work­ing at RBC."I have been in the bank­ing sec­tor for a very long time. I can­not say I have any re­grets work­ing at RBC, I have grown in a way that I did not an­tic­i­pate be­cause of how RBC has changed over time. I can­not say it has been a re­gret," she said.

She said the man­age­ment struc­ture at RBC con­tin­ues to "evolve.""It has changed over the last four years. I am leav­ing with a dif­fer­ent role from what I start­ed with four years ago, I can­not say that I am hap­py or un­hap­py with the man­age­ment struc­ture and I have made the de­ci­sion to move on," she said.In the Sun­day Guardian re­port, Duke-West­field al­so de­nied that Suresh Sookoo, CEO of Caribbean Bank­ing for RBC, will be leav­ing the bank and said he is "very much at work" at the bank.

Phone calls and a text mes­sage to Sookoo's phone yes­ter­day were not an­swered.