Ja­maica Mon­ey Mar­ket Bro­kers Lim­it­ed (JMMB) now has 100 per cent share­hold­ing in T&T's In­ter­com­mer­cial Bank (IBL).This fol­lows the com­pa­ny's ac­qui­si­tion of the re­main­ing 50 per cent share­hold­ing held by the Mit­tal fam­i­ly of In­dia yes­ter­day.The trans­ac­tion was con­firmed in a brief state­ment which al­so said that the share­hold­ing dis­posed of was owned by pri­vate com­pa­nies con­nect­ed to the fam­i­ly of LN Mit­tal.

The JMMB Group had pre­vi­ous­ly ac­quired a 50 per cent share­hold­ing in IBL from the Mit­tal fam­i­ly com­pa­nies in De­cem­ber 2004. Last month, the com­pa­ny an­nounced plans to ac­quire IBL and In­ter­com­mer­cial Trust and Mer­chant Bank af­ter get­ting ap­proval from T&T's Cen­tral Bank.

With this pur­chase JMMB now owns its first com­mer­cial bank, adding to their ex­ist­ing fleet of op­er­a­tions in Ja­maica, T&T and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic. The re­sult is a much larg­er Caribbean fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion pro­vid­ing in­te­grat­ed ser­vice to peo­ple in the re­gion

At the of­fi­cial open­ing of IBL's Tu­na­puna branch ear­li­er this year, JMMB's ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Don­na Dun­can-Scott, said the group's in­volve­ment in T&T is a key part of their "ex­pand­ing re­gion­al foot­print".

JMMB Group CEO, Kei­th Dun­can spoke about the planned bank ac­qui­si­tion at the group's an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing in Ja­maica last month. "As an in­dige­nous Caribbean fi­nan­cial ser­vices com­pa­ny, we are ex­cit­ed about this op­por­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther build out bank­ing ser­vices in the T&T mar­ket," he said.

"JMMB and IBL share a com­mit­ment to gen­uine client care, flex­i­bil­i­ty and re­spon­sive­ness, and to­geth­er we will build on that, to the ben­e­fit of our clients. The strength and com­mit­ment of the IBL team, cou­pled with JMMB Group's re­gion­al reach, ex­per­tise and fo­cus on valu­ing each client, make a for­mi­da­ble part­ner­ship," he added.

IBL Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor and CEO, Kr­ish­na Bood­hai, who at­tend­ed the AGM, had said at that time that the trans­ac­tion would fur­ther po­si­tion the bank as a strong fi­nan­cial en­ti­ty with­in T&T

"I am con­fi­dent of the pos­si­bil­i­ties and ben­e­fits that this will of­fer to all our clients, as both JMMB and IBL are com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing cus­tomised so­lu­tions to meet the fi­nan­cial goals of our clients, at every stage of their life or busi­ness phase," Bood­hai said.

JMMB's lines of busi­ness span se­cu­ri­ties deal­ing, stock bro­ker­ing, for­eign ex­change trad­ing, in­sur­ance bro­ker­ing, bank­ing and re­mit­tances. It is list­ed on the T&T, Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica Stock Ex­changes.