Tethered to SAGICOR & SERVICE
IT HAS been one year since Richard Byles took over the reins as chairman of Sagicor Group Jamaica, having retired as chief executive officer and having passed the mantle of executive leadership to Christopher Zacca last May.
Regarded as a management guru, Byles’ service to Sagicor was also interspersed with public service — both elements of which vaulted him into the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica’s Hall of Fame.
In addition to his 14-year leadership of the financial services powerhouse, marked by unbroken years of growing profits and expanding business streams, Byles, at different times, also took on the chairmanship of state-owned entities, including utility National Water Commission and the government’s resort development vehicle Harmonisation Limited.
Still, it was his co-chairmanship of the Economic Programme Oversight Committee, EPOC, as the straight-talking private-sector representative of the group shadowing the country’s agreement with the International Monetary Fund that seemed the most definitive of his national service.
But Byles said he found all the roles to be satisfying.
“I think that, in a way, I was intending to serve. That was my original intention when I studied economics and not business — to be an economist for the country. Life has its many twists and turns, and I found myself in business,” he told the
Financial Gleaner in a wide-ranging interview.
Byles himself regards the EPOC role as the highlight of his national service. “It is a very satisfying feeling to know that you make some contribution. It is quite different to business success, which is great, too, just of a different nature,” he said.
Back on the corporate side, serving since 2005 as chairman of Desnoes & Geddes Limited, which trades as Red Stripe Jamaica, Byles is also credited with much of the transformation the iconic Jamaican beer and beverage company has undergone.
“If you don’t change, you get left behind,” he said. “At every twist and turn, Red Stripe has had to adapt to new changes in the (local and global) economy and has done so admirably. I enjoy working with the company. It’s a great brand. I enjoy the marketing. It’s a manufacturing company but very much a marketing company, too.”
BUSINESS JOURNEY
The journey to business success has not taken the path that he initially mapped out for himself.
Having studied economics at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies, he intended to work as an economist. This took him on a six-month stint writing with the Jamaica Information Service, then to the Jamaica Industrial Development Corporation where he worked with Rita Humphries-Lewin, before heading off to do his master’s degree in economics for national development at the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom.
On his return to Jamaica, Byles worked with the National Investment Bank of Jamaica, NIBJ, and undertook economic research for HumprhiesLewin, who was by then an established stockbroker. His research work took him to a sit-down with the late Maurice Facey, former head of the PanJam Group, who offered him a job to head up the small Pan Caribbean Merchant Bank. He was later promoted to CEO of the PanJam group in 1991 and currently sits as a director on the board. PanJam is now the second-largest shareholder in Sagicor Group Jamaica. “Rita and Maurice offered me opportunities bigger than I thought myself capable of. Hopefully, I rose to the occasion and fulfilled their expectations,” Byles reminisced. He also named former Life of Jamaica head and his immediate predecessor as chairman of Sagicor Group, R. Danny Williams, as well as Dodridge Miller, the chairman of Sagicor Jamaica’s parent company, Sagicor Financial Corporation, as persons who have impacted his career. The accomplished business leader says he has no regrets about the road he has travelled professionally.
WONDERFUL RIDE
“It’s been a wonderful ride for me. I never thought I would be here. It teaches you that you can’t predict life. You can try to influence it and you should, (but) sometimes life offers you opportunities that are not on the path you thought you would be on. I have enjoyed both sides of my career — service to country and the business side.”
Byles said he embraced his somewhat changed role at Sagicor with that business having taught him how to deal with people and forced him to step out of the former role of “business surgeon”, operating in the background and being more concerned with numbers and the cutting, carving, mergers and disposals involved in business. The financial conglomerate’s operations span a range of business lines, including life and health insurance, annuities, pensions administration, investment services, commercial banking, investments banking, hotels, property management and real estate sales and rentals.
“Sagicor is a part of me. Even though I am not CEO anymore, the umbilical cord is there,” Byles said, letting on that he still has so much to do he sometimes finds himself in office on Saturdays, even while indicating confidence that the executive transition to Chris Zacca has gone well.
“It’s not like I am walking up and down troubling people,” he joked.
Shareholders of the company apparently agree. At 67, Byles was over the age limit to serve on Sagicor’s board, but he was given a reprieve last week when the annual general meeting voted in favour of increasing the limit for directors to 72 years — giving him at least five more years. As for his outlook for the Jamaican economy, Byles noted the political maturity involved in the current Government continuing the general economic programme began by the previous administration. He expects economic growth to be gradual, however, saying that with the existing high levels of debt payment, Jamaica is not able to afford the high levels of government investment needed to complement local and foreign private investments to stimulate growth in the region of three to five per cent per year.
‘Sagicor is a part of me. Even though I am not CEO anymore, the umbilical cord is there.’