Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed yes­ter­day an­nounced that it had closed its ac­qui­si­tion of RBC Roy­al Bank (Suri­name) NV through the pur­chase of Roy­al Over­seas Hold­ings (St Lu­cia) Ltd at an es­ti­mat­ed cost of US$45.3 mil­lion.

The cost of the bank is 14 per cent high­er than the US$39.8 mil­lion Re­pub­lic had sig­nalled on April 1, when T&T's largest in­dige­nous bank an­nounced the sign­ing of a share pur­chase agree­ment with RBC.

The new­ly re­named Re­pub­lic Bank (Suri­name) NV be­gins op­er­a­tions on Mon­day (Au­gust 3) and will have a net­work of five branch­es in the cap­i­tal of Para­mari­bo and one in Nick­erie.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Re­pub­lic Bank said its new Suri­name sub­sidiary has as­sets of ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$525 mil­lion (as at Oc­to­ber 31, 2014) and its lat­est ac­qui­si­tion brings the Re­pub­lic Bank Group's strate­gic ex­pan­sion to nine ter­ri­to­ries com­pris­ing Bar­ba­dos, Cay­man Is­lands, Cu­ba, St Lu­cia, Trinidad and To­ba­go, Grena­da, Guyana, and more re­cent­ly, Ghana.

"We're very ex­cit­ed about the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be part of the fu­ture de­vel­op­ment of Suri­name and in­tend to hold true to our tra­di­tion of adding val­ue to the coun­tries in which we op­er­ate, both on a com­mer­cial and com­mu­ni­ty lev­el," Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Re­pub­lic Bank, David Du­lal-White­way stat­ed.

"Un­doubt­ed­ly, at our core is a cul­ture of pro­vid­ing ex­cel­lent, in­no­v­a­tive cus­tomer ser­vice. We be­lieve in or­gan­ic growth and have a well-es­tab­lished in­sti­tu­tion­al track-record of suc­cess­ful­ly en­ter­ing new ter­ri­to­ries, en­sur­ing com­pli­ance and in­tegri­ty, while in­vest­ing in tech­nol­o­gy and the de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try's hu­man re­source ca­pa­bil­i­ties."

The group's re­gion­al cor­po­rate so­cial in­vest­ment pro­gramme, The Pow­er To Make A Dif­fer­ence, fo­cus­es on strate­gi­cal­ly build­ing suc­cess­ful so­ci­eties through pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion, health care and youth de­vel­op­ment in the ar­eas of sport, cul­ture and ed­u­ca­tion. The group has al­ready be­gun to look for new op­por­tu­ni­ties in Suri­name, the bank said.

In the state­ment, Re­pub­lic Bank said Glo­ria An­tho­ny, its gen­er­al man­ag­er of com­mer­cial and re­tail bank­ing has been ap­point­ed as the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the Suri­name sub­sidiary.