Consortium of indigenous banks within Eastern Caribbean Currency Union will be new owners

The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) has approved the sale of Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) in the territories of the Eastern Caribbean.

The announcement was made yesterday by ECCB Governor Timothy Antoine.

Antoine disclosed that the ECCB’s RBC assets will be sold to a consortium of indigenous national banks within the ECCU jurisdiction. The banking consortium comprise First National Bank in St Lucia, Antigua Commercial Bank, National Bank of Dominica, Bank of Montserrat, and Bank of Nevis.

The assets being sold comprise RBC operations in Antigua and Barbuda, the Commonwealth of Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St Lucia, St Kitts and Nevis, and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

Addressing a press briefing following the 98th Meeting of the ECCU Monetary Council at ECCB headquarters in Basseterre, St Kitts and Nevis on February 12, Antoine gave further details about the pending sale.

He told journalists that “the process is now moving forward, and an announcement will be made in due course”.

Antoine promised “to conclude that transaction not too long from now. So that is moving forward. In fact, I can tell you only yesterday [on February 11] we submitted to the finance ministers a vesting order or vesting orders, which is an important legal instrument to transfer assets from one bank or banking entity to another”.

As such, he declared that process is moving forward.

Banking sales in the Eastern Caribbean

The sale of RBC to Caribbean banks follows the similar acquisitions of Canadian based banks by Caribbean entities. In 2019, much of Bank of Nova Scotia’s (BNS) stake in the Eastern Caribbean was sold to Trinidad and Tobago’s Republic Bank.

In October last year, BNS declared that it had reached an arrangement for the sale of its services in Antigua and Barbuda to the Eastern Caribbean Amalgamated Bank Limited (ECAB). That settlement is subject to regulatory permissions and other conventional closing requirements.

The ECCB governor also addressed the recent decision by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) that a majority stake in First Caribbean International Bank Limited (FCIB) would not be sold after a bid was rejected by Caribbean regulators.

According to Antoine, “in terms of the sale of CIBC, I would simply confirm that regulators across the region considered it. Central Bank of Barbados is the lead regulator, based on the jurisdiction of CIBC FCIB. But all regulators, including the ECCB, were involved in that discussion, and came to that decision which has been conveyed and … the application was denied.”