Ky­ron Reg­is

ky­ron.reg­is@hot­mail.com

First­Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al Bank Ltd (FCIB) has reg­is­tered a $1.15 bil­lion prof­it for the fis­cal year end­ed Oc­to­ber 31.

The bank re­port­ed net in­come of US $170.5 mil­lion, up by US $69.7mil­lion or 69 per cent, a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease from one year ago when its net in­come was US $100.8 mil­lion.

In the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s fi­nan­cial re­port, CEO Co­lette De­laney said that the com­pa­ny’s earn­ings were dri­ven by the sol­id growth in its per­form­ing loan book.

She said: “Cred­it loss ex­pense was im­proved as the bank ben­e­fit­ed from mod­el en­hance­ments and changes to as­sump­tions due to low­er prob­a­bil­i­ty of de­faults.”

De­laney con­tin­ued: “This was off­set by in­creased tax­a­tion and high­er op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es.”

The Board of Di­rec­tors of FCIB ap­proved a fi­nal quar­ter­ly div­i­dend of $0.0125 per share, bring­ing the to­tal div­i­dend to $0.05 per share for the year. De­laney ex­pressed that the div­i­dends will be paid on Jan­u­ary 24, 2020 to share­hold­ers of record as at De­cem­ber 27, 2019.

De­laney al­so ar­tic­u­lat­ed that the bank’s Tier 1 and To­tal Cap­i­tal ra­tios re­main strong at 14.5 per cent and 16.2 per cent, well in ex­cess of ap­plic­a­ble reg­u­la­to­ry re­quire­ments.

On No­vem­ber 8, CIBC an­nounced its in­ten­tion to sell part of its share­hold­ing in First­Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al Bank Ltd to GNB Fi­nan­cial Group Lim­it­ed (“GNB”).

GNB, will pur­chase 66.73 per cent of the shares of First­Caribbean, sub­ject to the ap­proval of lo­cal reg­u­la­tors, while CIBC will re­tain a 24.9 per cent in­ter­est in the Caribbean bank.

GNB is whol­ly owned by Star­mites Cor­po­ra­tion S.ar.L, the fi­nan­cial hold­ing com­pa­ny of the Gilin­s­ki Group. The Gilin­s­ki Group has bank­ing op­er­a­tions in Colom­bia, Pe­ru, Paraguay, Pana­ma, and Cay­man Is­lands with ap­prox­i­mate­ly US $15 bil­lion in com­bined as­sets.

The Gilin­s­ki Group is led by Jaime Gilin­s­ki Ba­cal, a Colom­bian bil­lion­aire, banker and re­al-es­tate de­vel­op­er.

In a past re­lease, Gilin­s­ki said: “First­Caribbean will re­main the strong en­ti­ty it is to­day, com­mit­ted to ser­vic­ing its clients in the re­gion.” He con­tin­ued: “I have been im­pressed by the strength and sta­bil­i­ty of First­Caribbean and am ex­cit­ed about its prospects for the fu­ture.”

Ac­cord­ing to an­oth­er re­lease, the 66.73 per cent stake will be pur­chased at US$797 mil­lion, valu­ing the com­pa­ny at ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$1.195 bil­lion.

Com­ment­ing on the trans­ac­tion De­laney said: “This is an ex­cit­ing de­vel­op­ment for First­Caribbean. It cre­ates a plat­form for the fu­ture growth of our Bank and al­lows us to re­tain and cel­e­brate our her­itage while build­ing our fu­ture.”