Scotiabank remains in Guyana for now: CARICOM Business Vol 2 No 39

Extract from CARICOM Business newsletter, Vol 2 No 39

The Bank of Nova Scotia will not proceed with a proposed sale of its operations in Guyana “at this time” promising to “continue to deliver business as usual and focus on the best long-term solution for our employees and customers.”

This comes in the wake of the refusal of the Guyana’s Central Bank to approve the intended sale of Scotiabank’s (Guyana) operations to the Trinidad-headquartered Republic Bank. Reasons offered by the Bank of Guyana (BoG) include concentration risk, AML/CFT [Anti-Money Laundering and Combatting the Financing of Terrorism] considerations and the lack of supervisory capacity by the Central Bank itself.

According to Central Bank Governor Gobin Ganga, the Canada headquartered bank was informed that the BoG would not oppose a sale to another foreign bank to reduce risk exposure as a result of market dominance and less    humbugs to do correspondent banking.

The Government of    Guyana had consistently argued that with Republic Bank currently holding 35.4% of the banking systems assets and 36.8% of deposits in the country, its acquisition of Scotiabank would push its stake in the local banking sector to 51% of both assets and deposits.

Read full newsletter:  CARICOM Business

Caricom Business September 27 2019_vol-2 No-39

Source: CARICOM TODAY