GEISHA KOW­LESSAR ALON­ZO

Re­gion­al econ­o­mist Je­re­my Stephen is warn­ing that Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd can face a pe­ri­od of re­duced prof­itabil­i­ty and strate­gic un­cer­tain­ty fol­low­ing last week’s res­ig­na­tion of board di­rec­tor Ed­ward Ince and the de­par­ture of CEO-des­ig­nate Richard Sam­my, de­vel­op­ments he says that have cre­at­ed un­set­tling sig­nals for cus­tomers, share­hold­ers and the wider mar­ket.

Stephen, a Bar­ba­di­an, not­ed that the lead­er­ship changes come as Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL), re­mains one of T&T’s most strate­gi­cal­ly im­por­tant fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, with the Gov­ern­ment main­tain­ing a con­trol­ling in­ter­est in the bank­ing group.

He said the de­par­ture of two se­nior fig­ures with­in days of each oth­er is like­ly to at­tract height­ened scruti­ny from in­vestors and stake­hold­ers giv­en the bank’s sig­nif­i­cant role in the do­mes­tic and re­gion­al fi­nan­cial sys­tem.

On the day af­ter Ince’s res­ig­na­tion took ef­fect, on Oc­to­ber 16, 2026, the fi­nan­cial group con­firmed that Richard Sam­my had abrupt­ly ex­it­ed the or­gan­i­sa­tion af­ter 18 years of ser­vice, ef­fec­tive Oc­to­ber 14, 2026.

On Jan­u­ary 30, 2026, RFHL an­nounced that Sam­my would suc­ceed Nigel Bap­tiste as the group’s top ex­ec­u­tive, over­see­ing both the hold­ing com­pa­ny and its T&T sub­sidiary, at Bap­tiste’s re­tire­ment on Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

How­ev­er, the board re­versed its lead­er­ship plan, re­sult­ing in Sam­my leav­ing his post as group vice-pres­i­dent of RFHL and vice-pres­i­dent of Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd months ahead of the sched­uled han­dover.

RFHL ap­point­ed Karen Yip Chuck as the in­com­ing group pres­i­dent and CEO of RFHL, as well as man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd, ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

At a PNM po­lit­i­cal meet­ing last Fri­day, for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young stat­ed that po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in T&T’s largest in­dige­nous fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion could threat­en con­fi­dence in the coun­try’s bank­ing sys­tem,

Against that back­drop, Stephen told the Busi­ness Guardian that the com­bi­na­tion of high-pro­file ex­its at one of the Caribbean’s largest fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions war­rants close at­ten­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en Re­pub­lic Bank’s re­gion­al foot­print and in­flu­ence.

The econ­o­mist de­scribed Ince’s res­ig­na­tion as par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy be­cause of the Bar­ba­di­an busi­ness­man’s long-stand­ing rep­u­ta­tion across the Caribbean.

“There is a lot of con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the de­par­tures from RBL and oth­er in­ter­ests in Trinidad and To­ba­go. There are the ac­cu­sa­tions of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence, as the case may be.

“I’m not here to say if that is true or not. How­ev­er, what re­al­ly does pique my in­ter­est is, giv­en the rep­u­ta­tion that Mr Ince car­ries in Bar­ba­dos, and across the re­gion as the eth­i­cal busi­ness­man, one who is very care­ful about what he choos­es and who he choos­es to as­so­ciate with, as is his right, as is any­body’s right. When you see a res­ig­na­tion of that type of pro­file, or the per­son that car­ries that type of pro­file, it makes one won­der about why, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the rep­u­ta­tion and the im­por­tance of that or­gan­i­sa­tion,” Stephen said.

Ac­cord­ing to Stephen, the de­par­ture of a di­rec­tor with such a pro­file rais­es ques­tions that ex­tend be­yond T&T.

“There is, or it could be, or it could be looked at as a sig­nal of sys­temic risk, just giv­en the in­flu­ence that RBL has in Trinidad, in Bar­ba­dos, and in oth­er Caribbean coun­tries. One just has to know that, so ques­tions will per­tain to what must have caused a per­son of such re­pute to con­sid­er re­sign­ing, rather than just be­ing forced out for un­der­per­for­mance, giv­en their pro­file, giv­en what they’ve meant to the or­gan­i­sa­tion for the past 10 years. So, a lot of turns on the board for sure.

“It’s just high­ly, in my opin­ion, some sort of in­di­ca­tor there and is worth in­ves­ti­ga­tion. It should, just giv­en again the pro­file and the se­quence of events that have per­tained, alert reg­u­la­tors across the re­gion as to any po­ten­tial is­sues that could un­der­mine, not just in­vestor con­fi­dence, but de­pos­i­tor con­fi­dence down the line. Such sig­nals are very dis­rup­tive, def­i­nite­ly in the minds of most peo­ple not as im­por­tant as say, il­lic­it use of funds, or a very large dis­re­gard to fidu­cia­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ty,” Stephen added.

Stephen ar­gued that stake­hold­ers across the Caribbean would in­evitably ques­tion what cir­cum­stances prompt­ed Ince’s de­par­ture af­ter ap­prox­i­mate­ly a decade of ser­vice on the board.

“And I’m not just look­ing at it from a Trinidad and To­ba­go per­spec­tive, be­cause it could sig­nal, just giv­en how Mr Ince is re­put­ed across the Caribbean, and es­pe­cial­ly in Bar­ba­dos, a very out­stand­ing busi­ness­man who doesn’t get caught up in pol­i­tics, from my own ca­su­al ob­ser­va­tions, or isn’t caught up in a num­ber of ar­eas, or a num­ber of is­sues. It does beg the ques­tion what is­sues might have been un­veiled with­in RBL at the re­gion­al lev­el. And that cer­tain­ly does af­fect prospects in Bar­ba­dos,” he said.

Con­cerns over lead­er­ship in­sta­bil­i­ty

Be­yond Ince’s res­ig­na­tion, Stephen ex­pressed con­cern about the im­pli­ca­tions of Sam­my’s de­par­ture from the chief ex­ec­u­tive po­si­tion.

He not­ed that chief ex­ec­u­tives of ma­jor fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions are rarely ap­point­ed for short pe­ri­ods, mak­ing Sam­my’s ex­it par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant.

“Re­gard­less of the rea­sons be­hind it, there are very clear sig­nals that you just don’t want to send as an in­sti­tu­tion, and pri­mar­i­ly one of them is hav­ing short-stint CEOs. It al­ways points to some mea­sure of un­rest with­in com­pa­nies,” he said.

While stress­ing that he was spec­u­lat­ing based on­ly on pub­licly avail­able in­for­ma­tion, Stephen sug­gest­ed sud­den lead­er­ship changes of­ten point to ten­sions at the board or share­hold­er lev­el rather than prob­lems low­er down with­in an or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“There’s some mea­sure of un­rest,” he said adding, “It could be be­cause of who has ma­jor in­flu­ence at the share­hold­er lev­el, be­cause that’s what in­flu­ences de­ci­sions at the board lev­el.”

Ac­cord­ing to Stephen, ex­ec­u­tive turnover of­ten re­sults in un­cer­tain­ty as in­sti­tu­tions ad­just to new strate­gies, pri­or­i­ties and man­age­ment styles.

“You have to get a new CEO, and a new set of in­struc­tions, a new strate­gic vi­sion and new im­ple­men­ta­tion,” he said adding, “Across the board, there’s go­ing to be a pe­ri­od of in­sta­bil­i­ty.”

That ad­just­ment pe­ri­od, he ar­gued, may slow de­ci­sion-mak­ing and growth ini­tia­tives, po­ten­tial­ly af­fect­ing prof­itabil­i­ty over the short to medi­um term.

“My mon­ey would be on a re­trac­tion of sorts of prof­itabil­i­ty as they go through this pe­ri­od of in­sta­bil­i­ty,” Stephen said.

He be­lieves any pres­sure on earn­ings would like­ly stem from dis­rup­tion to strate­gic ex­e­cu­tion rather than ris­ing costs, un­less stronger-than-ex­pect­ed eco­nom­ic growth in key mar­kets such as T&T and Bar­ba­dos helps boost lend­ing ac­tiv­i­ty.

Stephen not­ed that Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd could seek to main­tain sta­bil­i­ty through in­creased non-in­ter­est in­come, in­clud­ing fees and oth­er trans­ac­tion-based rev­enue streams.

Draw­ing par­al­lels with Bar­ba­dos, he point­ed to the un­cer­tain­ty that fol­lowed the an­nounce­ment of the sale of CIBC’s re­gion­al op­er­a­tions to Bermu­da’sBut­ter­field Bank, say­ing busi­ness­es of­ten be­come more cau­tious dur­ing pe­ri­ods of lead­er­ship or own­er­ship tran­si­tion.

At the same time, Stephen cau­tioned against any per­cep­tion of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in bank­ing in­sti­tu­tions where gov­ern­ments have share­hold­ings.

“You re­al­ly don’t ever want to see that lev­el of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence be­cause it then starts to ques­tion how the bank can op­er­ate as a fidu­cia­ry agent,” he said.

Look­ing ahead, Stephen said the cen­tral is­sue would be whether the re­cent changes ul­ti­mate­ly strength­en gov­er­nance and per­for­mance or lead to a pro­longed pe­ri­od of un­cer­tain­ty.

Le Hunte rais­es gov­er­nance con­cerns

The lead­er­ship shake-up has al­so drawn scruti­ny from for­mer in­sid­ers, with for­mer ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd, Robert Le Hunte, call­ing for greater trans­paren­cy, warn­ing that unan­swered ques­tions could have im­pli­ca­tions for con­fi­dence in one of the Caribbean’s largest bank­ing en­ti­ties.

He re­called a ma­jor dis­pute near­ly 30 years ago in­volv­ing CL Fi­nan­cial, when ques­tions were raised about at­tempts to ex­ert in­flu­ence over the bank’s af­fairs.

“This is­sue about the role of the ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er and the ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er ex­er­cis­ing un­due in­flu­ence is noth­ing new to Re­pub­lic,” Le Hunte said.

He not­ed that dur­ing that pe­ri­od, the bank’s man­age­ment as­so­ci­a­tion and mem­bers of the board open­ly chal­lenged what they viewed as in­ap­pro­pri­ate in­volve­ment by the ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er in the in­sti­tu­tion’s gov­er­nance.

While stress­ing that he is not mak­ing al­le­ga­tions about the sit­u­a­tion, Le Hunte said the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Sam­my’s de­par­ture have prompt­ed le­git­i­mate ques­tions.

“My con­cern is when I see this per­son’s sud­den de­par­ture, it again rais­es for me cer­tain con­cerns about cor­po­rate gov­er­nance,” he said.

Le Hunte said the ques­tions are height­ened be­cause Sam­my re­ceived strong pub­lic en­dorse­ments from Re­pub­lic’s lead­er­ship around the time of his de­par­ture.

“...And not on­ly his sud­den de­par­ture but his sud­den de­par­ture and the glow­ing rec­om­men­da­tions that were giv­en to by him by the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and the chair­man in­di­cat­ing, from my per­spec­tive, that there is noth­ing un­to­ward that he has done in light of the fact that he was ap­point­ed as the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and pres­i­dent of this in­sti­tu­tion. There is noth­ing in my mind af­ter an ex­ten­sive re­cruit­ment process there are in­deed ques­tions as to ask as to why is there a change,” Le Hunte said.

Ac­cord­ing to Le Hunte, the role of a ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er is to ap­point di­rec­tors, while the board’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is to act in the best in­ter­ests of the com­pa­ny and its share­hold­ers as a whole.

He main­tained that di­rec­tors have fidu­cia­ry du­ties to the in­sti­tu­tion and should not sim­ply car­ry out the wish­es of any sin­gle share­hold­er.

Le Hunte fur­ther con­tend­ed that ques­tions should be ad­dressed not on­ly by Re­pub­lic Bank’s board and ex­ec­u­tives, but al­so by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Gov­ern­ment as ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er.