Bahamas - FirstCaribbean International Bank

Ian Chinapoo
Managing Director
Capital Markets
Capital Markets
Growing from Strength to Strength
In 2006/2007, Capital Markets continued to build on the solid foundation
established in our prior three years and enjoyed a banner year, featuring
the near doubling of team size, achievement of significant milestones and
international accolades for our efforts.
Building Our Team
This year we followed through with our plan to build out key areas of our
business, namely Structured Finance, Primary Distribution and Transaction
Management, all of which are crucial elements to our continued development
and success. Overall, the team is now nearly double its size from the end of
last fiscal and this strategy has already started to pay big dividends.
Performance Milestones
We ended the year marginally above our planned operating profit. In our
third full year of operations, our revenues grew by 13% over prior year
and we achieved a cost to income ratio of 35.2%. The coming year holds
significant promise as we end 2007 with a pipeline of US$2.37 billion in
aggregate value. We are incredibly excited that, during this year, we crossed
the US$1 billion mark in financings for Caribbean Corporates and Sovereigns
since we commenced operations four years ago. Prominent among these
is the US$375 million financing of the International Waterfront Project in
Port of Spain, Trinidad, which closed in February 2007. This pioneering and
competitively-priced deal was the largest non-energy sector fundraising
for any Trinidadian entity and the first direct offering of Trinidad & Tobago
paper into the United States Private Placement (USPP) market. To add to our
delight, the bridge financing for this transaction was awarded The Banker
magazine’s “Deal of the Year Trinidad & Tobago” in early 2007. The award,
issued by The Banker magazine and the Financial Times Group, is the first
to be received by FirstCaribbean and is also one of the first ever awarded in
the Caribbean region. We made further inroads in the Northern Caribbean,
leading significant corporate fundraisings and closing our first transaction in
the Cayman Islands.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank the other units within the
Bank who have contributed to our performance through their continued
support and guidance.
Our Focus for the Future
As we look ahead to the coming year, innovation and relationship-building
will be our main areas of focus. The building out of our Structured Finance,
Primary Distribution and Transaction Management areas of the business will
allow senior country personnel to refocus on executing these strategies. We
are confident that our enthusiastic and energetic team can deliver on these
areas whilst setting and adhering to distinctive standards in performance,
customer service, teamwork and controls.