Jamaica Gleaner

Scotiabank ‘restructur­ing’ Barbados operations

- BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC):

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.

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