Four vice-presidents sent home
FOUR vice-presidents of the Unit Trust Corporation have been sent home in an on-going shake-up at one of the country’s leading financial institutions, which is said to be causing great concern among staff.
The four vice-presidents, who formed part of the organisation’s executive management team, were severed in December last year although they remain on the corporation’s payroll until the end of February. They include: Reuben McSween, vice-president Customer Service Centre Network; Gary Pierre, vice-president Corporate Support Services; Emily Chee Wah, Chief Risk Officer; and Richard Shepherd, vice-president, Electronic Services.
And according to sources at the UTC, the shakeout is expected to continue with 12 members of the UTC’s Human Resources Department slated to be sent home including Assistant Vice-President Human Resources Joanne Thomas, the PNM Member of Parliament for St Ann’s East.
In what is being transmitted to staff as a restructuring and cost-cutting exercise, plans are also in train to roll back some of the benefits offered to staff, including paid parking, car loans, car repair loans and education loans, although the corporation is said to have relented on the subsidised mortages which staff members enjoy.
The UTC staff were informed last October that the organisation was overstaffed and that a redundancy programme would be instituted which would mean 26 positions would have to go. The positions were not idenified at the time, leading to concerns over job security. Ironically, one of the first to be severed was McSween, a recent former Chairman of the Employers Consultative Association, which advises companies on industrial relations matters and which in 2010 voted the UTC as its ‘Champion Employer of the Year’.
What is of great concern to the staff, however, is the cuts are being accompanied by huge multi-million dollar consultancy contracts being awarded to “advisors” to current Executive Director Eutrice Carrington.
Among the consultants are Dr. Trevor Farrell, reputedly Carrington’s mentor as an economics student at the UWI and who is said to wield significant influence at the UTC; Lloyd Samaroo and Victor Mouttet, former executive directors at Republic Bank who were said to have been paid US$600,000 to create a new company, UTC Financial Services, on a contract that included provisions for a $2 million bonus.
Staffers are also accusing Carrington, who turns 60 in March, of attempting to secure an extension beyond the corporation’s strict retirement policy by seeking to bring greater ethnic balance to the UTC’s executive staff. They point to the appointment this week of a relatively junior Kristal Nanan as President of UTC Financial Services and to Carrington’s request that a candidate of Indian descent be appointed as the UTC’s Internal Auditor although he was not among those originally short-listed.
The Mirror sought to contact Carrington for a comment on the restructuring mandate and the firing of senior staff at the corporation but was referred to UTC’s vice-president in charge of Marketing, Communication and Distribution, Gayle Daniel-Worrell, who confirmed that the corporation was being restructured.
In a statement, Daniel-Worrell said, “the Unit Trust Corporation has restructured its operations to improve its efficiency. This has involved the creation of new departments and the streamlining of old.”
The statement went on to add, “There have been redundancies and new positions have been filled on the basis of merit. None of the positions filled at the UTC has been filled on anything other than merit.”
It went on to add that “the UTC has a duty to operate in the best interest of its unit holders, accordingly we use the best experts locally and internationally who bring expertise and value to the UTC in their respective fields.”
Furthermore, it stated, “Everything we do at the Unit Trust Corporation is focused on improving our ability to offer safe, stable and secure investments to our unit holders.”
The UTC’s statement came in response to specific questions posed by the Mirror which questioned the rationale for getting rid of the four vice-presidents as part of the company’s cost-cutting exercise, at a time when it had awarded millions of dollars worth of contracts to consultants.
Mirror also sought to clarify claims by sources that the candidate selected for the job of Internal Auditor did not include those who were short-listed but instead was based on a request from the Executive Director that she wanted an Indian person for the job.
Daniel-Worrell’s statement failed to respond directly to the questions posed, including a query about what criteria were used for appointing Krystal Nanan to the post of President UTC Financial Services. The 30-year-old UTC boasts of having over 500,000 customers in more than 130 countries around the globe, and has paid over TT $150 million in distributions to its customers.
