Letters to the Editor
Newsday
THE EDITOR: The April general election of the UNC govt has triggered convulsions within state-controlled entities, with the replacement of boards and management being the main issues, most recently in the case of First Citizens’ bank in which the state is the majority shareholder.
The Finance Ministry is entirely within its legal rights to change the boards of state-controlled entities, subject of course to compliance with the Central Bank’s “Fit & Proper” rules and the requirements for an extraordinary general meeting.
That said, there are a few additional perspectives to consider, flowing from the Prime Minister’s outright, repeated declarations that the state is the majority shareholder in both First Citizens and Republic Bank Ltd.
*Query on Republic Bank’s board: We are witness to the sudden replacement of First Citizen’s Group CEO Karen Darbasie and its entire board, so are we now therefore to expect that the Republic Financial Holdings’ CEO and board is to be similarly, summarily replaced? If not, why not? This question was also posed by my erstwhile colleague and Business Guardian editor, Anthony Wilson, on August 28 in “Is Republic Bank next?”
*The Integrity Commission – Will all officers and directors of both those companies now be required to file declarations to the Integrity Commission?
*Changing/replacing the board – I agree with ecomomist Mariano Browne’s recent comments that it is inadvisable and extremely rare for the entire board of a financial institution to be changed all at once, since that means complete loss of institutional memory.
Finally, I was concerned to note that the new appointee as incoming First Citizen’s chairman is Mr Shankar Bidaisee, who was also recently appointed chairman of Udecott.
This is not in any way an attack on Mr Bidaisee’s competence, but the era of the “super-chairman” or “czar” should be placed firmly in the history books. Former PM, the late Patrick Manning, found such favour with Calder Hart that he was appointed to chair the boards of five state-controlled entities. Yes, five. We all should reflect on how that particular “concentration of power” ended-up. But that was in the “bad-old-days,” and we ought to have learned from those bitter experiences. There are enough high-quality, willing candidates to serve in those positions, even given the heavy demands of public office. That concentration of power is never a good thing, so it needs to be avoided.
via e-mail
Afra Raymond
afraraymond.net
