Karen Dar­basie re­mains the sub­stan­tive group CEO of ma­jor­i­ty state-owned First Cit­i­zens Group Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings un­til Oc­to­ber 21, 2025, when she will re­tire. That is ac­cord­ing to an all-staff mem­o­ran­dum is­sued by the bank’s chair­man, An­tho­ny Smart, fol­low­ing a spe­cial board meet­ing held yes­ter­day. The all-staff mem­o­ran­dum, which was seen by Guardian Me­dia, states, “Our group CEO Karen Dar­basie, has pro­ceed­ed on ap­proved va­ca­tion leave for the pe­ri­od Au­gust 21, 2025, and will re­tire ef­fec­tive Oc­to­ber 21, 2025.”

The memo, in which Smart ad­dressed the over 1,400 em­ploy­ees of the bank on be­half of its board, re­futes a re­port in yes­ter­day’s Trinidad and To­ba­go News­day that Dar­basie had ten­dered her res­ig­na­tion as group CEO “in a sud­den and un­ex­plained move” and that her res­ig­na­tion had been sub­mit­ted to Cor­po­ra­tion Sole, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, on Au­gust 20. Sources con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that Dar­basie did not sub­mit a let­ter of res­ig­na­tion.

On April 4, 2025, First Cit­i­zens is­sued a ma­te­r­i­al change no­tice an­nounc­ing that the board of the com­pa­ny had tak­en the de­ci­sion on March 28, 2025, to ap­point Ja­son Julien as the new group CEO to re­place Karen Dar­basie up­on her re­tire­ment.