Comment history

banker says...

LOL.

On Aliv: Yields up by 10% in one year

Posted 13 November 2019, 11:23 a.m. Suggest removal

banker says...

Bahamians would never have him ... he has a Haitian charitable foundation. He also doesn't mind huge debt, and spends money like water to get what he wants.

On Aliv: Yields up by 10% in one year

Posted 13 November 2019, 11:21 a.m. Suggest removal

banker says...

Never heard about Vincent. How did he do it?

banker says...

Nope. This has nothing to do with local politics today, or even the Bahamas at all currently. Nothing can save us now. Several years ago, I was employed by their wealth management group (CIBC). At a performance review of mine, where a Toronto executive sat in, I outlined my career goals and educational requirements to meet those goals. My Bahamian manager nodded politely. That night, I joined the Toronto executive for a few drinks. He told me that my career options were limited in terms of what I wanted to do, and my best bet would be to find another bank. I did exactly that. Canadian banks were no longer returning the profits that they did in the heady days prior to FATCA, the FATF and the OECD, and even in those days, it was quietly being shopped around. The risk associated with banking in the Caribbean multiplied with the shrinkage of international business and the growth of Latin American business that was fraught will problems of all kinds. The next bank that I joined, also sold their book of business, and thankfully I ended up with their international parent, out of the Caribbean jurisdictions. Nobody wants to do correspondent banking business with the IBC model that the Bahamas and other tax havens have, for fear of fines of hundreds of millions of dollars. We could have saved ourselves 20 years ago by changing course and becoming involved in merchant, commercial, capital markets and investment banking in full compliance, but we didn't. The Cayman Islands did, and their banking sector saw a 7.2% growth, whereas ours has declined miserably. Ironically, when PLP PM CriscoButt came into power, he commissioned Brian Moree to do a report to revive our financial sector, and the Bahamas banking industry excoriated him for daring to even suggest the things that might have saved us.
We are our own worst enemies. We are backwards in our banking technology and our thinking. We had to chase dirty Latin American money because everything else dried up.
The benchmark standard for ROE (Return on Equity) is 11.2 % world wide, and the Bahamian operations are a dismal fraction of that. Nothing to do with the current government. The blame, like everything else retrograde in this country belongs to the PLP.

On Colombian CIBC sale goes ahead

Posted 11 November 2019, 3:37 p.m. Suggest removal

banker says...

Damn, no more drugs without a prescription.

On Pharmacists lose licence renew bid

Posted 10 November 2019, 10:39 a.m. Suggest removal

banker says...

Oil is the answer. But not petroleum, but rather cannabis oil. It will be legal almost everywhere in the Western Hemisphere in 10 years. If we start now, and start exporting high grade cannabis, both medicinal and recreational, we could climb out of shiite-hole country status.

On Oil explorer: 'All the tools we will need'

Posted 9 November 2019, 5:06 p.m. Suggest removal

banker says...

LOL

On Oil explorer: 'All the tools we will need'

Posted 8 November 2019, 5:51 p.m. Suggest removal

banker says...

Yes .I'd say more, but it would be immoral of me to take more than that of your money.

On Oil explorer: 'All the tools we will need'

Posted 8 November 2019, 5:49 p.m. Suggest removal

banker says...

They are both dogs. You lose on both of them. The head of Oban has a degree in Art for fuchk sakes. As iterated, we are a naive people who will believe anybody if it sounds like we gettin' something free.

On Oil explorer: 'All the tools we will need'

Posted 8 November 2019, 5:49 p.m. Suggest removal

banker says...

Oil is not shown by scans. It is found by seismic data and drilling. Seismic data sends waves through the water and seabed and each geological layer reflects back some of the wave energy. The rock density can be extrapolated and then used to create a geological map of the layers of seabed. That layer map will show features where oil may have accumulated millions of years ago from the vegetation of the carboniferous era, but it doesn't show oil. It shows them the right type of place. Then they have to drill. There is some oil in the Caribbean Basin, but not this far north. The oil is sulfurous and requires vast amounts of energy to refine. That is why Cuba is not oil self-sufficient. It is a very poor grade of crude.

As a side note, oil is not a saviour. Trinidad is an oil-producing country, and their economy is so bad, that they have instituted currency controls preventing the use of hard currency for use outside the country. Their oil is not typical of the Brent Sweet Crude which is the best kind of crude oil to refine.

This new technology stuff is BS. The petroleum company is feeding you a stack of lies like they have every year since they have been operating.

It's almost like believing in Trump to believe that there is oil down there that will save the Bahamas. There isn't. If there was, Shell, Texaco, Esso and the lot of them would be down here like white on rice.

On Oil explorer: 'All the tools we will need'

Posted 8 November 2019, 5:43 p.m. Suggest removal