Karen Dar­basie re­mains the sub­stan­tive group CEO of ma­jor­i­ty state-owned First Cit­i­zens Group Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings un­til Oc­to­ber 21, 2025, when she will re­tire. That is ac­cord­ing to an all-staff mem­o­ran­dum is­sued by the bank’s chair­man, An­tho­ny Smart, fol­low­ing a spe­cial board meet­ing held yes­ter­day. The all-staff mem­o­ran­dum, which was seen by Guardian Me­dia, states, “Our group CEO Karen Dar­basie, has pro­ceed­ed on ap­proved va­ca­tion leave for the pe­ri­od Au­gust 21, 2025, and will re­tire ef­fec­tive Oc­to­ber 21, 2025.”

The memo, in which Smart ad­dressed the over 1,400 em­ploy­ees of the bank on be­half of its board, re­futes a re­port in yes­ter­day’s Trinidad and To­ba­go News­day that Dar­basie had ten­dered her res­ig­na­tion as group CEO “in a sud­den and un­ex­plained move” and that her res­ig­na­tion had been sub­mit­ted to Cor­po­ra­tion Sole, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, on Au­gust 20. Sources con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that Dar­basie did not sub­mit a let­ter of res­ig­na­tion.

On April 4, 2025, First Cit­i­zens is­sued a ma­te­r­i­al change no­tice an­nounc­ing that the board of the com­pa­ny had tak­en the de­ci­sion on March 28, 2025, to ap­point Ja­son Julien as the new group CEO to re­place Karen Dar­basie up­on her re­tire­ment.

In yes­ter­day’s all-staff mem­o­ran­dum, Smart point­ed out, “Con­sis­tent with the pub­lished an­nounce­ment made on April 4, the board has ap­point­ed Ja­son Julien, cur­rent­ly group deputy CEO, busi­ness gen­er­a­tion, to act as group CEO in her (Dar­basie’s) ab­sence from Au­gust 22, 2025 un­til the re­tire­ment of the group CEO (on Oc­to­ber 21), af­ter which he will as­sume the sub­stan­tive po­si­tion as group CEO."

The First Cit­i­zens board, at its meet­ing yes­ter­day, al­so ap­point­ed Sana Rag­bir, gen­er­al man­ag­er of re­tail and com­mer­cial bank, to act as group deputy CEO, busi­ness gen­er­a­tion from to­day to Oc­to­ber 21, while Julien is act­ing group CEO.

Neela Mooni­lal Kissoon will con­tin­ue in her sub­stan­tive role as group deputy CEO of op­er­a­tions and ad­min­is­tra­tion, the bank’s board in­di­cat­ed.

Re­fer­ring to Dar­basie’s stew­ard­ship, the First Cit­i­zens board said, “Ap­point­ed in 2015, her pro­gres­sive lead­er­ship style, un­der­scored by her ex­cel­lence and vi­sion in mak­ing this award-win­ning group’s record prof­it be­fore tax of $1.27 bil­lion for the fis­cal year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024, has not gone un­no­ticed..

“The board, man­age­ment and staff ex­tend our sin­cere grat­i­tude to Ms Dar­basie for her dili­gence, ded­i­ca­tion, busi­ness acu­ity and in­tegri­ty to where it is to­day.

“On a na­tion­al lev­el, her ef­forts have been recog­nised by the award to her of the Cha­co­nia Medal Gold in the sphere is bank­ing and fi­nance.”

Ac­cord­ing to its fi­nan­cial re­port for the six months end­ed March 31, 2025, First Cit­i­zens had as­sets to­talling $48.49 bil­lion and de­clared af­ter-tax prof­it of $444.82 mil­lion.

The News­day ar­ti­cle re­ferred to First Cit­i­zens call­ing a spe­cial meet­ing of its share­hold­ers to re­place the ex­ist­ing board of di­rec­tors, who would be se­lect­ed by Cor­po­ra­tion Sole. The bank’s 2024 an­nu­al re­port in­di­cates that 60.11 per cent of the com­pa­ny is owned by First Cit­i­zens Hold­ings Ltd, which is a 100 per cent state-owned com­pa­ny.

T&T’s Com­pa­nies Act places the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for call­ing a spe­cial meet­ing of a com­pa­ny in the hands of its di­rec­tors. Those di­rec­tors must re­ceive a req­ui­si­tion of the hold­ers of not less than 5 per cent of the is­sued shares of the com­pa­ny that car­ry a right to vote at the meet­ing req­ui­si­tioned.

The Com­pa­nies Act al­so states, “The share­hold­ers of the Com­pa­ny may, by or­di­nary res­o­lu­tion passed at a spe­cial meet­ing of the share­hold­ers, re­move any di­rec­tor from of­fice and a va­can­cy cre­at­ed by the re­moval of a di­rec­tor may be filled at the meet­ing of the share­hold­ers at which the di­rec­tor is re­moved.”

If Cor­po­ra­tion Sole req­ui­si­tions a spe­cial meet­ing to re­move the First Cit­i­zens di­rec­tors, the ear­li­est the meet­ing can be held is Sep­tem­ber 22.