Hylton and Cohen take on new assignments
In the aftermath of their official separation from financial banking group the National Commercial Bank (NCB), former CEO Patrick Hylton and deputy Dennis Cohen have both taken on new assignments.
The assignments, which comes nowhere close to the level of duties the men oversaw while spearheading the management affairs of the country’s largest banking group, see them both moving to take up top-level board appointments across different organisations within The University of the West Indies (UWI) community.
Cohen, who was first appointed chairman of The UWI ‘Operation Restructuring Transformation and Growth (RTG)’ project in early November, has been charged with the task of using his expertise and skill sets to transform the administrative processes of the campus.
Operation RTG, a new initiative by the institution, was developed to restructure, transform, and drive new areas of growth across the university campus. Among its many objectives, the project seeks to increase efficiency in business processes, reduce operational cost, generate at least $4 billion in annual net revenue from new projects as it also increase employee engagement. The UWI, in awaiting the results from the work of the committee by second quarter of 2024, said it is to be followed by an implementation process in the upcoming academic year 2024/2025.
In a similar move, Hylton, whose appointment as the new chairman of the board of management for the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI), was also this week drafted to initiate and lead a governance reset for the hospital. This, following a series of discussions on the strategic direction of the hospital which ended with the resignation of former chairs, Wayne Chai Chong and Dr Andre Foote.
“The new board chairman is expected to bring about the synergy and cohesion necessary to effectively pursue the reform mandates for the UHWI. The reform mandates include, among other things, the recruitment of a new CEO and restructuring of the organisation; completing the implementation of the computerised health information system and construction of a new six-floor tower,” the health ministry said in a notice at the start of this week.
Hylton and Cohen, after first being sent on leave from the bank in July of this year, was stripped of their management responsibilities after disagreement with the board about issues such as the payment of dividends and their compensation package brought some amount of discontent, forcing Chairman Michael Lee-Chin, who indicated that he was also ‘unhappy’ with the state of affairs at the bank, to take over control and to appoint new leadership.
After much speculation and discourse in the public arena about the level of payout that would be given to the former banking executives, notes from the company’s recently published audited financials saw the men who officially parted ways with the bank last month, following over two decades of service, walking way with almost $6 billion or $5.8 billion in a settlement package.
The financial report, in outlining the one-off separation costs, reflected a $4.83 billion in share benefit along with a cash settlement of $1.0 billion. It did not, however, explicitly indicate how the funds were apportioned.