NCB Fi­nan­cial Group (NCBFG) an­nounced on Mon­day that the share pur­chase agree­ment for the sale of its 100 per cent stake in NCB (Cay­man) has beeen ter­mi­nat­ed.

In a no­tice that was pub­lished on the Ja­maica Stock Ex­change on Mon­day, NCBFG point­ed out that the agree­ment to sell the Cay­man fi­nan­cial ser­vices op­er­a­tion was ex­e­cut­ed on Feb­ru­ary 2, 2024, be­tween the group’s Ja­maican bank­ing sub­sidiary Na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Bank Ja­maica (NCBJ) and Berke­ley Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings, a pri­vate­ly held com­pa­ny based in Lon­don, Unit­ed King­dom,

“The ter­mi­na­tion of the agree­ment be­tween NCBJ and Berke­ley aris­es from the agree­ment not reach­ing com­ple­tion with­in the agreed time and in the spe­cif­ic man­ner con­tem­plat­ed by them. The in­ten­tion is there­fore to ex­plore al­ter­na­tives at this junc­ture,” said NCBFG in its no­tice.

NCB Cay­man re­mains a whol­ly-owned sub­sidiary of NCBFG domi­ciled in the Cay­man Is­lands, which cur­rent­ly op­er­ates un­der a Cat­e­go­ry “A” bank­ing li­cence, the fi­nan­cial hold­ing com­pa­ny said, adding that the Cay­man op­er­a­tion of­fers an ar­ray of in­vest­ment bank­ing, wealth and as­set man­age­ment ser­vices and in­tends to main­tain its fo­cus on pro­vid­ing en­hanced val­ue to its cus­tomers.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, NCBJ said it en­tered the agree­ment with Berke­ley Fi­nan­cial to sell the Cay­man en­ti­ty “as part of its strate­gic fo­cus on op­ti­mis­ing cap­i­tal al­lo­ca­tion, gen­er­at­ing fi­nan­cial in­flows, and pri­ori­tis­ing growth in its core busi­ness ar­eas. The sale was in­tend­ed to boost the group’s abil­i­ty to al­lo­cate re­sources ef­fi­cient­ly, while main­tain­ing its ded­i­ca­tion to de­liv­er­ing val­ue across its op­er­a­tions.”

NCBJ said the non-com­ple­tion of the agree­ment does not have any ma­te­r­i­al im­pact on NCBFG’s bal­ance sheet.

“While the sale pre­sent­ed a strate­gic op­por­tu­ni­ty, the group main­tains strong fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty and con­tin­ues to de­liv­er val­ue through its di­verse op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing NCB (Cay­man),” said NCBJ.

Al­so re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, Berke­ley Fi­nan­cial said it holds NCB (Cay­man) in high re­gard and saw great po­ten­tial in ac­quir­ing it due to its ro­bust port­fo­lio of fi­nan­cial ser­vices.

The Lon­don-head­quar­tered fi­nan­cial ser­vices com­pa­ny said its in­ter­est was dri­ven by the align­ment of NCB (Cay­man)’s of­fer­ings with its strate­gic goals of ex­pand­ing our mar­ket share in the Caribbean area.

Re­fer­ring to the lan­guage in the NCBFG news re­lease that the agree­ment was not com­plet­ed “in the spe­cif­ic man­ner con­tem­plat­ed” by Berke­ley Fi­nan­cial, the UK firm said that that refers “to the mu­tu­al­ly agreed con­di­tions and process­es re­quired to com­plete the trans­ac­tion with­in the set time­lines. These terms are stan­dard in such ne­go­ti­a­tions to en­sure that both par­ties’ ex­pec­ta­tions and reg­u­la­to­ry re­quire­ments are met ad­e­quate­ly.”

Berke­ley Fi­nan­cial added, “Un­for­tu­nate­ly, de­spite the po­ten­tial mu­tu­al ben­e­fits, the deal could not be com­plet­ed as planned. There was no dis­par­i­ty in val­u­a­tion or a lack of in­ter­est, but rather ad­min­is­tra­tive and oth­er un­fore­seen is­sues that pre­vent­ed the trans­ac­tion from con­clud­ing with­in the agreed-up­on time­frame and spe­cif­ic con­di­tions.”

NCBFG is chaired by Ja­maican/Cana­di­an bil­lion­aire, Michael Lee-Chin.