Wayne Dass was named yes­ter­day as the gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund Hold­ing Com­pa­ny (NIF), the first time the sev­en-year old com­pa­ny has em­ployed a se­nior of­fi­cer.

Ac­cord­ing to a no­tice post­ed on the T&T Stock Ex­change, Dass took up the po­si­tion with ef­fect from Ash Wednes­day, March 5 2025.

Dass pre­vi­ous­ly was the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Caribbean In­for­ma­tion and Cred­it Rat­ing Ser­vices lim­it­ed, Cari­Cris.

He how­ev­er re­tired from that post at the cred­it rat­ing agency in De­cem­ber 2023, af­ter be­ing in charge of the the or­gan­i­sa­tion for about 16 years.

Dass has BSc and MSc de­grees in en­gi­neer­ing and is a char­tered fi­nan­cial an­a­lyst char­ter hold­er.

Just un­der a month ago, on Mon­day Feb­ru­ary 10 2025, the NIF con­firmed it made two coupon pay­ments: the thir­teenth coupon pay­ment of $85.2 mil­lion on its Se­ries B and Se­ries C Bonds which brought to­tal pay­out on these bonds since its es­tab­lish­ment to $1.37 bil­lion — with Se­ries A hav­ing been suc­cess­ful­ly re­deemed in Au­gust 2023; and the sec­ond coupon pay­ment on the NIF2 Bonds amount­ing to $9.0 mil­lion.

In a no­tice to the TTSE last month, NIF stat­ed it had been able to meet all its statu­to­ry pay­ments in the light of its bal­anced and well-struc­tured port­fo­lio. The next se­mi-an­nu­al coupon pay­ments to bond hold­ers of Se­ries B and Se­ries C and the NIF2 Bonds would be on Au­gust 11 2025.

The NIF com­pa­ny was cre­at­ed in 2018 as the Gov­ern­ment is­sued an as­set-backed bond in three tranch­es com­pris­ing as­sets ac­quired from CL Fi­nan­cial in part pay­ment of the group's debt to tax­pay­ers as a re­sult of the 2009 bailout.

The NIF bond in­cludes shares in Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL), One Caribbean Me­dia, West In­di­an To­bac­co Com­pa­ny, An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd and Trinidad Gen­er­a­tion Un­lim­it­ed (TGU). Shares in the first four com­pa­nies came from the CL Fi­nan­cial group, while 100 per cent of TGU was placed in NIF.

The Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund Hold­ing Com­pa­ny is the largest share­hold­er of RFHL, own­ing 49,021,779 shares in the fi­nan­cial hold­ing com­pa­ny. Those shares ac­count­ed for 29.94 per cent of RFHL, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny's 2024 an­nu­al re­port.

The NIF bonds were ini­tial­ly of­fered in five-year, 12-year and 20-year pack­ages. The bond was is­sued in an at­tempt to hold and mon­e­tise state as­sets.

The ini­tial bond was over­sub­scribed and sub­se­quent­ly list­ed on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change in 2018.

The NIF 2 was launched in March 2024.

Thr chair of the Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund Hold­ing Com­pa­ny is Jen­nifer Lutch­man, a per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Fi­nance. The oth­er three di­rec­tors of the com­pa­ny are Nadi­ra Ly­der, project im­ple­men­ta­tion ad­vi­sor, Min­istry of Fi­nance, Dex­ter Jag­ger­nauth, act­ing per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Min­istry of Fi­nance and Cindy Pierre, state coun­sel II, Trea­sury So­lic­i­tor’s De­part­ment, Min­istry of Fi­nance.

The com­pa­ny's of­fices are lo­cat­ed in the Min­istry of Fi­nance tow­er in the Er­ic Williams Fi­nan­cial Com­plex in down­town Port of Spain.