RBTT’s group CEO Suresh Sookoo.

Photos: Andre Alexander

BY SANDRA CHOUTHI

Suresh Sookoo’s installation as group chief executive officer at RBTT on March 24 was karmic—it happened only when it was supposed to.

“I always had a perspective on life— what is for you will be yours—in the right time and in the right place,” said Sookoo, 49, relaxing in his black high-back leather chair.

His office is on the fifth floor of RBTT’s head office on bankers’ row on Park Street, Port-of-Spain.

The man sitting in it said he makes an attempt to keep life simple, to stay grounded, but admitted the job does not always allow that.

He moved toward the glass-enclosed bookshelf filled with publications by management gurus and biographies of business icons—Lee Iacocca, Stephen Covey and Tom Rath and Donald Clifton’s How Full Is Your Bucket, to name a few.

To stay informed of cutting-edge business practices and models, Sookoo tries to read at least one management book a month.

How Full Is Your Bucket resonates with Sookoo’s own life philosophy:

“If the good Lord has given you the opportunity to reach this kind of level in any institution, it means you have been given a sort of power, and a capability to influence the lives of many. Therefore, you have to accept that responsibility, ethically and morally, as the case may be.”

He accepts that as CEO, his every move, every quiver, every behaviour, every comment, is analysed and judged.

“You have to kind of create a guard in terms of what you say,” Sookoo said. “In addition, the bar is lifted.”

“One of the things I’ve always said is, when you get to this type of position, if you’re going to make a speech or say something on a particular issue, you have to live it, not just say it.”

Sookoo understands the challenge of communicating changes from the top down to the bank’s lowest levels without the message getting garbled en route.

He is also wary that information reaching the organisation is “clean and unedited.”

“A CEO tends to get very filtered information,” he said. “Some people—not only within the bank—would like to tell you what they want you to hear.”

This youthful-looking CEO has an unassuming persona.

Sookoo has applied in his life lessons he learned growing up among eight siblings, “Having grown up in a big family, you learn to share, you learn to compete, you learn to create your own space.”

After graduating from St Mary’s College, this islandwide scholarship winner worked at what was then Royal Bank from 1974-75, leaving to study economics at the UWI’s St Augustine campus.

He also has an executive master’s in business administration (with distinction) from the UWI.

During the three years he studied at UWI, he worked as a teller during the August vacation. At age 22, he rejoined the bank in 1979 as a management trainee.

He rose through the ranks over the years, moving from assistant manager of commercial loans, manager of credit administration to account executive, senior manager executive and senior manager, the latter three positions in the corporate banking division.

Sookoo left the bank as assistant general manager in the corporate and international group in 1997 to take up the role as vice-president of corporate and commercial lending at Citibank (T&T) Ltd.

He returned to Royal Bank in 1999 as director of risk management and finance.

In 2001, he was made group director of risk management and finance of RBTT Financial Holdings Ltd, and in 2003, CEO of RBTT Bank Ltd (the Trinidad operation).

In April 2004, Sookoo became group chief operating officer of RBTT Financial Holdings Ltd.

Shortly thereafter, the financial institution’s board went outside the group to hire Jerome Sooklal as the group CEO.

Sooklal, who held the job for about 18 months, left RBTT last month.

Asked to comment on how he felt at not being selected as group CEO in favour of Jerome Sooklal, Sookoo replied, “After Shivan...”

His voice trailed off.

He was referring to the December 23, 2003, car accident that caused the death of his elder son, Shivan, and his friend, Dion Patel, son of Angostura executive Patrick Patel.

“You also have to keep some kind of perspective,” Sookoo said.

On his desk are framed photos, of himself, his wife Suzanne, Shivan and their surviving son, Ravi, 21.

Ravi is studying economics at York University in Toronto, Canada.

Sookoo said shortly before Shivan’s death, he and his wife were looking to buy a car with airbags for him to commute between home and his Pt Lisas job at PCS Nitrogen.

Sadly, the car in which the two friends were in had no airbags.

“You go through your periods where you’d miss him like crazy. Anything, any moment. You cannot predict those moments,” Sookoo said.

“There are many ways you get your own solace and one of them for me is he was given to you as a gift, you took care of the gift as long as the good Lord allowed you to and the good Lord needed him back.”

RBTT’s head office on Park Street in Port-of-Spain.

Guardian file photo

‘We’re keeping our GHL shares’

Under his stewardship as group CEO, Suresh Sookoo wants the RBTT name to have a familiar register throughout the Caribbean.

“A lot of the initial focus on my part would be to really get the group across the Caribbean, so that when we talk about RBTT, we don’t just think Trinidad, we think Suriname in the south all the way to Jamaica,” he said.

The method: build teams, spend time in jurisdictions outside of T&T, involve executives in decision-making, and get leaders to work together.

“That is the internal diaspora. On the external side, we have the Project Recast, which is building a new customer experience, which will begin to roll out across the Caribbean in early 2007,” he said. “It is the modern RBTT you want to see in the next ten to 15 years.”

He credited his predecessor, Jerome Sooklal, whose departure group chairman Peter July confirmed on March 24, with forcing RBTT to critically examine itself and where it wanted to go.

Sooklal, who left the Washington-based International Finance Corporation to join RBTT in 2004, was said to have completed the bank’s reorganisation exercise aimed at regional diversification and expansion.

“Jerome did certain things that were good for the organisation. He came in as an external body to implement change,” Sookoo said.

He spoke of First Citizens Bank’s (FCB) “aggression,” which, he said, has led it to gain local market share and expand outside.

“I think they have gained a couple of percentage points. We have not lost any, which means they have gained their market share at the expense of somebody else.

“What I think FCB has done a very good job at is building their brand and staying focused on Trinidad. You can say to some extent RBTT, because we have a bigger group to run, we may have lost a bit of paying attention to Trinidad, and the public similarly would have been more attuned to their expanding their franchise outside of Trinidad.”

Sookoo admitted that RBTT got caught up in managing its purchase of three failed banks from Jamaica’s Financial Sector Adjustment Company (Finsac)—which were later rebranded and which paid for itself a year later.

Asked how much RBTT paid for the Jamaica acquisition, Sookoo said, “An embarrassingly low figure. Every time we go to Jamaica, the Minister of Finance (Omar Davies) says we owe him money.”

Sookoo said RBTT is now looking to enter the Central American market.

RBTT Merchant Bank’s first transaction in Costa Rica, through its Central American regional manager Heidi Achong, was a US$10 million deal for Hidroelectrica Planatar, followed by US$60 million for Hydroenergia del General, both syndicated loans.

“It’s got to be a quantum leap for us because we’re going into another new culture, different language, understanding nuances,” Sookoo said.

Then there were RBTT’s acquisitions in the Dutch Caribbean—starting with Suriname, Curacao, St Maarten and Aruba in late 2002.

The interview switched to Guardian Holdings Ltd’s’ investment in RBTT: RBTT now holds approximately 15 per cent of GHL, while GHL holds approximately 14 per cent of RBTT.

“I don’t think RBTT will sell the shares it has with Guardian. Their core business is a very, very strong business,” Sookoo said. “They adopted an accounting methodology where their investment is directly linked to their profit and loss. Sagicor adopted the more conservative approach.

“From a pure regulatory as well as a shareholder standpoint, you can’t be changing your mind all the time. You have to be consistent in the approach you take to report earnings.

“I don’t think GHL wants to let go of its stake. I think it is a very good investment for them. At the current price at which RBTT is trading, RBTT is probably one of the best buys on the market right now,” he said.

Family ties to RBTT

Bisnath Sookoo is not only the father of RBTT Group CEO Suresh Sookoo, but led the family’s long working history with the bank.

Bisnath left RBTT 13 years ago at age 61. Within the bank, he was known as, “John.”

“He was in charge of printing. He was in charge of procurement of stationery,” explained Sookoo.

The product of an arranged marriage between Bisnath, 74, and Samdaye, 70, Sookoo candidly spoke about his humble roots.

His father worked as a yardboy at UWI. He later got a job as a messenger at Royal Bank, but doubled as a chauffeur to several bank executives.

“To earn extra income, he worked as a watchman when they were out of the country. When they had parties, he was a barman.

“The break he got was when the bank decided it was costing us too much money to pay for stationery. They had to make a choice of the most promising messenger/driver. He was picked,” Sookoo said.

The group CEO recalled the family living at El Dorado up until he was about five years old, when they moved to the “humble end” of Santa Margarita—Jordan Trace—on land bought by his paternal grandfather.

“I’m actually very proud of that background,” Sookoo said.

He remembered passing for St Mary’s College and being intimidated by notions of a cricket-loving “country boy” heading into Port-of-Spain.

His preconceived notions of being taken advantage of never came to pass.

Instead, he made great life-long friends—FCB chief executive Larry Howai, Keith Gellineau, Jim Cupid, Amol Golkeri.

“We went through UWI as friends and still are,” Sookoo said.

Of Howai, Sookoo said, “He was a year ahead of me. He was doing geography and that type of thing, and I was doing languages.”

Sookoo Snr led his children as employees of the bank, but having retired, Suresh Sookoo has inadvertedly assumed that role.

He has four siblings working with RBTT: Dhanpaul is general manager of group risk, Hemraj is a commercial account executive, Vashti Golkeri—she married his friend Amol—is assistant general manager at RBTT’s north branches, and Anganie is a trader in the treasury department.

Questioned about the ethics of several members of one family working in the bank, Sookoo acknowledged that it is sometimes awkward, but a reality he and his siblings have “probably never thought too much about.”

An ethical situation arose in 2003 when “Danny” was general manager of risk for the T&T operation, but was moved to general manager of group risk to avoid having to report directly to his elder brother, who was then managing director and CEO of the T&T operation.

Asked how his brother felt about it, Sookoo replied, “He understood why it had to happen. From another side, though, they all have their own careers, and I think they have done very well in the organisation.”

Dhanpaul has a UWI degree in management studies, Golkeri has a similar degree from Roytec and an MBA.

Sookoo said his siblings started working in the bank at a time when people studied either medicine, law or went into banking.

“Back in the older days of what was then Royal Bank of Canada, there was a tradition in the bank of hiring friends or family because you knew the neighbourhood. It was one big family,” he said.

“Back then, the Sookoos, the Alfonsos, the Fortunes, were big families with a lot of siblings. It’s not something that happened by accident; it happened almost by design.”