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JMMB acquires stake in T&T lending company

Published:Friday | September 23, 2022 | 12:12 AM
Keith Duncan, CEO of JMMB Group Limited.
Keith Duncan, CEO of JMMB Group Limited.

Consumer finance subsidiary of JMMB Group Limited, JMMB Express Finance, has acquired a 19.9 per cent stake in Bayshore Finance Limited, a company focused on delivering credit solutions for the insurance industry.

The disclosure was made at the financial conglomerate’s annual general meeting on Thursday.

The price paid by JMMB Express to acquire the shares in Bayshore Finance was not disclosed, but JMMB Group CEO Keith Duncan said Bayshore Finance will, in short order, become part of the integrated solutions provided in Trinidad & Tobago through JMMB Express Finance.

The deal awaits regulatory approval.

The acquisition of a near 20 per cent stake in Bayshore Finance comes shortly after JMMB Group announced the acquisition of 100 per cent shareholding in Dominican Republic-based Banco Múltiple Bell Bank SA, marking its entry into the Spanish-speaking market’s commercial banking sector.

From the Bell Bank acquisition, JMMB has been able to expand its footprint in the DR with an additional two branches, one at Bella Vista in the southern part of Santa Domingo and the other in Megacentro, the eastern part of Santo Domingo.

“The Dominican Republic is firing, and now Trinidad is firing up,” Duncan told shareholders.

The acquisition of Bayshore Finance is said to be a strategic fit for JMMB Express Finance, setting the stage to unlock opportunities for increased market penetration and accretive synergies. A deal that is accretive is expected to grow the acquiring company’s earnings per share.

“The Trinidad economy has been recovering very nicely and JMMB Bank T&T continues to grow at a faster rate than market. We are really confident that we have a good team in place to drive that growth,” Duncan said.

“We continue to look at opportunities in Central America and the Caribbean; that’s a pipeline that we continue to actively work, and we are hoping for good things,” he added.

Elson James is CEO of JMMB Express Finance. Shawn Moses has been named the new chief executive officer of JMMB Bank T&T, while Jerome Smalling is JMMB Group’s banking lead for the three territories in which it operates, that is, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago and Dominican Republic.

For the financial year ended March 2022, Trinidad and Tobago stood as the smallest contributor to net profit at 7 per cent, but its contribution to operating profit was 17 per cent. The group earned profit of $12 billion on revenues of $27 billion.

The JMMB T&T Group currently includes parent company JMMB (Trinidad & Tobago) Limited, JMMB Bank (T&T) Limited, JMMB Investments (Trinidad & Tobago), JMMB Express Finance (T&T) and JMMB Securities (T&T).

karena.bennett@gleanerjm.com