Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL), the par­ent com­pa­ny of Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd, yes­ter­day named Yash­mid Kara­math as the com­pa­ny’s new chair­man.

His ap­point­ment was ef­fec­tive as at De­cem­ber 15, 2025, the day the group held its 2025 an­nu­al meet­ing.

In a no­tice, RFHL de­scribed Kara­math as an ac­com­plished busi­ness leader with over 30 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment, cor­po­rate gov­er­nance and strate­gic lead­er­ship.

The bank said Kara­math cur­rent­ly serves as ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of Hafeez Kara­math Ltd (HKL), a lead­ing con­struc­tion and en­gi­neer­ing com­pa­ny in T&T, and the De­sali­na­tion Com­pa­ny of T&T (De­sal­cott), one of the largest de­sali­na­tion plants in the West­ern Hemi­sphere.

“Through­out his ca­reer, Mr. Kara­math has demon­strat­ed ex­cep­tion­al vi­sion and lead­er­ship. He suc­cess­ful­ly ne­go­ti­at­ed the ac­qui­si­tion of shares pre­vi­ous­ly held by an in­ter­na­tion­al multi­na­tion­al, se­cur­ing full lo­cal own­er­ship and man­ag­ing the fi­nanc­ing and re­pay­ment for the trans­ac­tion, RFHL said re­fer­ring to De­sal­cott.

The bank said he has over­seen HKL’s large-scale na­tion­al con­struc­tion projects, con­sis­tent­ly po­si­tion­ing the com­pa­ny as a mar­ket leader.

As founder and pres­i­dent of Ti­tan Build­ing Con­sul­tants, he has pro­vid­ed con­struc­tion man­age­ment ser­vices for na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al clients for over 25 years.

RFHL said Kara­math’s ex­per­tise spans strate­gic plan­ning, en­ter­prise-lev­el fi­nan­cial man­age­ment, op­er­a­tional ex­pan­sion and sus­tain­able growth.

It said the group warm­ly wel­comes Kara­math and looks for­ward to his lead­er­ship as we con­tin­ue to dri­ve in­no­va­tion, strength­en com­mu­ni­ties, and de­liv­er long-term val­ue for all stake­hold­ers