Scotiabank ‘restructuring’ Barbados operations

SCOTIABANK BARBADOS says it will be “restructuring” its managing director’s office here and has been holding talks with staff and the union on the issue.

The bank was responding to a report published in the online publication Barbados TODAY that as many as 20 employees could be placed on the breadline as a result of the restructuring exercise.

While it did not confirm the exact number of workers to be dismissed, Scotiabank, which has been in operation here since 1956, said that the restructuring was necessary because of the recent decision to sell some of its operations in the Eastern Caribbean.

“As a result of the completion of the sale of Scotiabank operations in seven Eastern Caribbean countries, we will be restructuring our managing director’s office in Barbados, particularly the centralised functions that supported the divested businesses,” the bank said in a statement.

“We have been discussing these changes with both our employees and our union partners over the past several months,” it added.

Last month, the St Kitts-Nevisbased Eastern Caribbean Central Bank announced that effective November 1, the Bank of Nova Scotia operations in Anguilla, Dominica, Grenada, St Lucia, St Kitts-Nevis, and St Vincent and the Grenadines would end and that the Trinidad-based Republic Financial Holding Limited (RFHL) would begin operations in these countries in a US$123-million deal.

Antigua and Barbuda has refused to provide the necessary vesting order that would have facilitated the sale in that island, with Prime Minister Gaston Browne insisting on the Toronto-based financial institution selling its assets to a consortium of local banks.